And the main reason France and Germany didn't join us in Iraq is because they were in bed with Saddam, with multi-billion dollar oil deals.
You mean, like the deals Cheney's former employers reap now in Iraq? Can't you accept that some countries can disagree with what USA is saying? That international law and sovereignity of states is not something one can just trod upon? Not just "nod nod nod, you're right Mr President, you're the Leader Of The Free World(tm), lead us into any war you please"?
Remember when all the critics told us we would get bogged down in Afghanistan just like the Russians? That we would never be able to take over the country without years and years of fighting and slogging through the mountains?
And did you take over Afghanistan? What piece of country is US-installed Hamid Kharzai ruling, except for Khabul and its outskirts? One of the major goals of Afghanistan War --- capturing Osama --- has not been achieved. Afghanistan is still ruled by tribe- and warlords, much like in Taliban times. Talibans are still fighting. The Russians failed, because they wanted to have full control over the country. The USA did not suffer defeat only because it left the country without trying to gain such control. It's like saying you're smarter than your neighbour because he tried to passed an exam and failed, while you didn't even bother to try.
The fact that most Americans don't know anything about the outside world does not mean that the outside world does not know a thing or two about America.
I wonder if there were any US presidents the world would have voted for in the past 50 years.
Kennedy? My mother (in Poland) told me that she cried when Kennedy was shot. He was really popular. I think all Eastern Europe would vote for Reagan, too.
The French (and other nations opposing the invasion of Iraq) were not afraid of fighting terrorists (Germany, for example, sent a large contingent to Afghanistan) They just prefer to use other methods than blowing up a functioning state and inviting the terrorists from all over the world for a party.
And what makes you trust the research of, say, Encyclopedia Britannica?
The fact that article writers have such magic letters like MSc, PhD or even Prof. before/after their names. Simply put, because Enc. Brit. is not written by just anyone with an internet connection, it is written by professionals who are responsible for what they write.
I would trust Wikipedia more if it had 'signed' articles, when I know who is to blame when the article is crap.
State wide fixed per pupil spending would resolve this issue, but the people with the power are the ones that have everything to lose because they currently live in the good districts.
No, it wouldn't. You'd have to forbid local authorities and parents to subsidize their schools in order to achieve a fixed level for funding, and it would be quite authoritarian way of running the system. Otherwise, the differences will arise nonetheless, only you'll have a less transparent funding mechanism.
In my opinion, one should have a minimum level of funding set at some reasonable compromise between quality and cost (good education is not cheap, even taking into account the enthusiasm and dedication of many teachers who work hard for low pay).
I dare you to name any profound, completely corporately-funded discovery, which was not based wholly or in major parts on any prior research in public academia.
Heh. Since Newton was an academic, it is impossible by default. However, in times already gone, IBM and other companies funded some pure research. US military was also good at it (I remember reading some paper from fundamental quantum mechanics whose author thanked US Navy for funding).
Chechen leader Maschadov condemned the terrorists, but probably Fox TV didn't show it.
Christianity is an older religion than Islam, we had our share of religious fanatism during the Middle Ages (the crusades!). Yet there are still Christians who think they have the only truth on Earth, and everybody else are filthy pagans.
Don't think Christians are innocents. Christan Americans slaughtered Indians and enslaved Africans in the XIXth century --- not so long ago, in historical perspective. The gas chambers were built by Europeans, not Arabs.
Islam is where Christianity has been in the Middle Ages: an aggressive religion, gathering momentum and unable to control its energy. Singling out Arab communities and treating them with unjustified suspicion will only make matters worse.
And how vocal have they been in protesting what happend in Russia, Spain and the USA?
Exactly why do you expect them to be more vocal than, say, Buddhists? How vocal have you been in protesting what happened in Chechenya, when Christian Russians killed Chechen children?
Ethnicity of Beslan attackers is not 100% known, but most of them were not Arabs. They were Muslims, though. This is not justification of terrorism, but Beslan probably would not have happened without 40,000 of Chechen children killed in Chechenya first.
I'm intentionally leaving the term "socialist" vague here, and admittedly it's probably not the best term. By it, I just mean a tendency towards government control (both in terms of regulation and in terms of how many services the government insists on running directly itself) centrally, at a nationwide level. Suggestions for a better "neutral" (e.g. not "fascist" or other emotionally-charged terms, since the word I'm looking for would not inherently imply injustice or oppression) are welcome, since by my working definition here, imposition of a state-mandated religion would be "socialist", and to my knowlege no modern nations who are generally tagged with the word "Socialist" (as opposed to being thought of as an outright "theocracy" or "dictatorship") really do that. At least not for the last couple-hundred years - the Church of England would once have qualified, but not in modern times.
One has to distinguish between two issues here: one is how much the state centralizes power in its hands (we call such states which do it on a large scale 'centralized') and another, how much the state takes care of its citizens' needs, instead of letting them do it on their own (we call such states 'welfare states'. These are two different issues. For example, France is very centralized and also has quite a lot of welfare (but you have to pay each time you see a doctor in France, though), and Germany is a welfare state, too, but is not centralized. W/r to religion, Sweden has a state church, priests are paid by the government and bishops have to be members of political parties in order to be ordained. And it would be called by you a 'Socialist' country!
I would say, that the better word would be 'socialdemocratic': welfare state, but with private enterpreneurship and democracy.
In order to be more "socialist" (by my almost-certainly-non-canonical definition here) Government needs to have more power over its citizens in order to maintain its control, both through "overt" and obvious means (e.g. police and "internal" military) and less obvious (controlling access to and distribution of information and goods. The larger the population of the governed, the more force the government needs to keep everyone in line.
You're ignoring the possibility that the government builds the welfare state because the people want it (and vote accordingly). If people in Europe were forced to accept welfare, would they oppose any cuts so strongly as they do?
Yes, you can. Delegation of power is the key. Slave workers in German agriculture were given to farmers, and commanded by them. No need to organize them in large masses. Same with manufactories --- private companies were assigned workers and responsible for organising their work. The Germans could do it as well without IBM machinery. I'll try to read the book, though.
And what will happen when there is ONLY free software left?
I doubt it will ever happen. I think that there will always be applications specialised enough, and costly enough to make (like some specialist program with lots of chemical data in it), that OS volunteers would fail --- say, because they lack the laboratory equipment necessary --- to recreate such piece of software. Of course, separating free software from proprietary data needed to run that software (like with quake clients --- free --- and ID quake maps --- proprietary) would be an answer. People would make money on giving access to collected, processed data, but the software operating on them could be free.
I wouldn't overestimate the impact IBM machinery had on Holocaust. I live in Poland, where most of the Jews perished (in Aushwitz and Treblinka and other places). The Nazis didn't use sofisticated techniques to hunt Jews. They simply ordered them first to gather in ghettos, put bounty on them, threatened death to anyone offering them any kind of help and then killed everybody in ghettos, and anybody in the street who looked Jewish to them (killed, or sent to a death camp). All of this could be done with pencil and paper, eps. when the beginning Jews themselves helped the Nazis administer the ghettos, thinking they'll survive as a slave labour and that it would be better than Germans running them on their own.
Besides, it is disputable if Germans really planned Holocaust before 1939, or even 1941. It must have existed as an idea in Hitler's mind since years, but no real planning, apart from general harassment and occasional murder (perhaps IBM lend a hand in that --- I don't know).
I still maintain that the degree to which a government can be "socialist" without being oppressive is inversely proportional to the size of the governed population. If California seceded from the US, I think they'd just BARELY be small enough to get away with a socialist government. If the entire US tried to do it on a national level, we'd end up with USSR II. Or so I maintain. I think this is why USAians - even Democrats - often seem "extreme right-wing" to Europeans.
What do you mean by 'socialist'? Also, there are some 3 world big countries which ran socialist governments but did not become stalinist. Like Brasil.
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And the main reason France and Germany didn't join us in Iraq is because they were in bed with Saddam, with multi-billion dollar oil deals.
You mean, like the deals Cheney's former employers reap now in Iraq? Can't you accept that some countries can disagree with what USA is saying? That international law and sovereignity of states is not something one can just trod upon? Not just "nod nod nod, you're right Mr President, you're the Leader Of The Free World(tm), lead us into any war you please"?
Remember when all the critics told us we would get bogged down in Afghanistan just like the Russians? That we would never be able to take over the country without years and years of fighting and slogging through the mountains?
And did you take over Afghanistan? What piece of country is US-installed Hamid Kharzai ruling, except for Khabul and its outskirts? One of the major goals of Afghanistan War --- capturing Osama --- has not been achieved. Afghanistan is still ruled by tribe- and warlords, much like in Taliban times. Talibans are still fighting.
The Russians failed, because they wanted to have full control over the country. The USA did not suffer defeat only because it left the country without trying to gain such control. It's like saying you're smarter than your neighbour because he tried to passed an exam and failed, while you didn't even bother to try.
The fact that most Americans don't know anything about the outside world does not mean that the outside world does not know a thing or two about America.
I wonder if there were any US presidents the world would have voted for in the past 50 years.
Kennedy? My mother (in Poland) told me that she cried when Kennedy was shot. He was really popular. I think all Eastern Europe would vote for Reagan, too.
You confuse theory (a logical construct based on and proved by facts) with a hypothesis.
A couple terrorists with guns and a speedboat isn't going to cut it.
Unless they are the speedboats used to attack USS "Cole".
The French (and other nations opposing the invasion of Iraq) were not afraid of fighting terrorists (Germany, for example, sent a large contingent to Afghanistan) They just prefer to use other methods than blowing up a functioning state and inviting the terrorists from all over the world for a party.
I hope you are wrong and that humanity could make a 'new start' in space, without taking everything which is wrong with it to space.
And what makes you trust the research of, say, Encyclopedia Britannica?
The fact that article writers have such magic letters like MSc, PhD or even Prof. before/after their names. Simply put, because Enc. Brit. is not written by just anyone with an internet connection, it is written by professionals who are responsible for what they write.
I would trust Wikipedia more if it had 'signed' articles, when I know who is to blame when the article is crap.
Why doesn't Google join the Mozilla project?
State wide fixed per pupil spending would resolve this issue, but the people with the power are the ones that have everything to lose because they currently live in the good districts.
No, it wouldn't. You'd have to forbid local authorities and parents to subsidize their schools in order to achieve a fixed level for funding, and it would be quite authoritarian way of running the system. Otherwise, the differences will arise nonetheless, only you'll have a less transparent funding mechanism.
In my opinion, one should have a minimum level of funding set at some reasonable compromise between quality and cost (good education is not cheap, even taking into account the enthusiasm and dedication of many teachers who work hard for low pay).
Own the software? If you read the Eula carefully you own nothing! That my friend is the beauty of Open Source.
You don't own the Open Source, either. You're still a licensee, only on much more liberal terms.
Of course, pure research cannot be done on the profit basis. Otherwise it wouldn't be called 'pure', eh?
I dare you to name any profound, completely corporately-funded discovery, which was not based wholly or in major parts on any prior research in public academia.
Heh. Since Newton was an academic, it is impossible by default. However, in times already gone, IBM and other companies funded some pure research. US military was also good at it (I remember reading some paper from fundamental quantum mechanics whose author thanked US Navy for funding).
Chechen leader Maschadov condemned the terrorists, but probably Fox TV didn't show it.
Christianity is an older religion than Islam, we had our share of religious fanatism during the Middle Ages (the crusades!). Yet there are still Christians who think they have the only truth on Earth, and everybody else are filthy pagans.
Don't think Christians are innocents. Christan Americans slaughtered Indians and enslaved Africans in the XIXth century --- not so long ago, in historical perspective. The gas chambers were built by Europeans, not Arabs.
Islam is where Christianity has been in the Middle Ages: an aggressive religion, gathering momentum and unable to control its energy. Singling out Arab communities and treating them with unjustified suspicion will only make matters worse.
And how vocal have they been in protesting what happend in Russia, Spain and the USA?
Exactly why do you expect them to be more vocal than, say, Buddhists? How vocal have you been in protesting what happened in Chechenya, when Christian Russians killed Chechen children?
Ethnicity of Beslan attackers is not 100% known, but most of them were not Arabs. They were Muslims, though. This is not justification of terrorism, but Beslan probably would not have happened without 40,000 of Chechen children killed in Chechenya first.
He offers the philosophy that file sharing is a result of the industry's failure to meet the business models demanded by today's consumer
Which is a nice way of saying that people would like to have everything for free.
Make her interested in it, then she'll play with you. That's what I do to make my wife let me play my CRPG games.
I'm intentionally leaving the term "socialist" vague here, and admittedly it's probably not the best term. By it, I just mean a tendency towards government control (both in terms of regulation and in terms of how many services the government insists on running directly itself) centrally, at a nationwide level. Suggestions for a better "neutral" (e.g. not "fascist" or other emotionally-charged terms, since the word I'm looking for would not inherently imply injustice or oppression) are welcome, since by my working definition here, imposition of a state-mandated religion would be "socialist", and to my knowlege no modern nations who are generally tagged with the word "Socialist" (as opposed to being thought of as an outright "theocracy" or "dictatorship") really do that. At least not for the last couple-hundred years - the Church of England would once have qualified, but not in modern times.
One has to distinguish between two issues here: one is how much the state centralizes power in its hands (we call such states which do it on a large scale 'centralized') and another, how much the state takes care of its citizens' needs, instead of letting them do it on their own (we call such states 'welfare states'. These are two different issues. For example, France is very centralized and also has quite a lot of welfare (but you have to pay each time you see a doctor in France, though), and Germany is a welfare state, too, but is not centralized. W/r to religion, Sweden has a state church, priests are paid by the government and bishops have to be members of political parties in order to be ordained. And it would be called by you a 'Socialist' country!
I would say, that the better word would be 'socialdemocratic': welfare state, but with private enterpreneurship and democracy.
In order to be more "socialist" (by my almost-certainly-non-canonical definition here) Government needs to have more power over its citizens in order to maintain its control, both through "overt" and obvious means (e.g. police and "internal" military) and less obvious (controlling access to and distribution of information and goods. The larger the population of the governed, the more force the government needs to keep everyone in line.
You're ignoring the possibility that the government builds the welfare state because the people want it (and vote accordingly). If people in Europe were forced to accept welfare, would they oppose any cuts so strongly as they do?
imagine trying to bid for a job against an illegal alien or Mexican willing to work for 50 cents per hour
Is 50 cents/hour really that attractive for Mexicans? It would be really low pay here in Poland.
Yes, you can. Delegation of power is the key. Slave workers in German agriculture were given to farmers, and commanded by them. No need to organize them in large masses. Same with manufactories --- private companies were assigned workers and responsible for organising their work. The Germans could do it as well without IBM machinery. I'll try to read the book, though.
And what will happen when there is ONLY free software left?
I doubt it will ever happen. I think that there will always be applications specialised enough, and costly enough to make (like some specialist program with lots of chemical data in it), that OS volunteers would fail --- say, because they lack the laboratory equipment necessary --- to recreate such piece of software. Of course, separating free software from proprietary data needed to run that software (like with quake clients --- free --- and ID quake maps --- proprietary) would be an answer. People would make money on giving access to collected, processed data, but the software operating on them could be free.
I wouldn't overestimate the impact IBM machinery had on Holocaust. I live in Poland, where most of the Jews perished (in Aushwitz and Treblinka and other places). The Nazis didn't use sofisticated techniques to hunt Jews. They simply ordered them first to gather in ghettos, put bounty on them, threatened death to anyone offering them any kind of help and then killed everybody in ghettos, and anybody in the street who looked Jewish to them (killed, or sent to a death camp). All of this could be done with pencil and paper, eps. when the beginning Jews themselves helped the Nazis administer the ghettos, thinking they'll survive as a slave labour and that it would be better than Germans running them on their own.
Besides, it is disputable if Germans really planned Holocaust before 1939, or even 1941. It must have existed as an idea in Hitler's mind since years, but no real planning, apart from general harassment and occasional murder (perhaps IBM lend a hand in that --- I don't know).
I still maintain that the degree to which a government can be "socialist" without being oppressive is inversely proportional to the size of the governed population. If California seceded from the US, I think they'd just BARELY be small enough to get away with a socialist government. If the entire US tried to do it on a national level, we'd end up with USSR II. Or so I maintain. I think this is why USAians - even Democrats - often seem "extreme right-wing" to Europeans.
What do you mean by 'socialist'? Also, there are some 3 world big countries which ran socialist governments but did not become stalinist. Like Brasil.