This minor distinction doesn't matter much to me. I was one of the individuals taken in 100% by the claims that we would be out of oil by 1997. There was no qualifications, it was pretty cut and dry: no oil in 1997. On top of that natural gas was supposed be gone in another 15 years. Acid rain and the ozone layer would kill us from above. And landfills would cover the entire continental US if we didn't act fast. I bought in, I bought in hard. I debated. I spread the propaganda. I berated those who stood in my way as denialists and hating the earth. I was wrong.
If I were to continue to accept the environmentalist position, after being proven wrong from most of my life, I would be no better than an abused wife in a battered relationship.
If you keep up with the calm rational thinking we may not have the social panic required to pass hastily thought-out, problem-ridden federal government mandated solutions. Then what?
This is just a guess, but one reason you may see the affluent people denying peak oil because affluent people may see things differently than you do. Affluent people often have the belief that they are in control of their own destiny, that their rewards will be in proportion to the fruits of their labors. Outside factors like Peak Oil are just roadblocks that aren't going to stand in their way of trying make their lives better.
I mean, really what are these people supposed to do? Tell their kids how shitty things may get? Should they go into panic and depression? Or should they just keep going to work and try to acquire the resources they and their family will need to get through Peak Oil or Zombies or any number of apocalyptic events that apparently WILL happen in the next couple years?
Bob Parsons was at the right place at the right time and sold a 2nd rate Tax Software package to Inuit who was afloat in internet bubble money. He took the 250 million or so, gave half to his ex-wife and burned through almost $125 million dollars before making GoDaddy.com profitable. He's not a Davey Crockett or a Daniel Boone -- he's bad business man who got lucky once and is still living off the fats of others' labors.
Nope this isn't how it works. GoDaddy pays ICANN a fee and the primary registrar for each domain. They used to sell NET/COM/ORG domains for $1.99 and pay $7.25, making up the difference on upsells. I don't know the fee now, but if they renew a domain for $10 they don't keep $10.
Considering the US has a trade deficit of over $226 billion dollars annually, and most Chinese goods are low skilled manufacturing that are easily replaced from other sources, and most US sales to China are high tech non-replaceable products, I'd say there is 0% chance of a trade embargo from China hurting the US in any meaningful way. On the other hand, such a move would utterly destroy the Chinese economy while we happily send the new cash to India. =P
The history of the destruction of the constitution predates FDR and the Civil War. I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. But I would like to point out that the first infraction was Thomas Jefferson himself. His deal for the Louisiana Purchase was 1) not supported by the constitution, and 2) contrary to his own beliefs in "strict constructionism". Before this there were two camps: those who said the government had only the rights laid out in the constitution (strict constructionists) and those who believed the government had all rights not specifically forbidden by the constitution. Thomas Jefferson did not have the moral authority to both support the constitution's most strict interpretation AND buy Louisiana.
I blame Southerners (Confederates) for destroying the rest of the constitution. Before 1865 there was a gentle balance between states rights and federal rights with states given deference in accordance with amendments 9 and 10. The lecherous confederates (I do live in the South) screwed everything up for the rest of us by insisting on holding onto slavery. Faced with the choice between slavery and the 9th/10th amendments most reasonable people sided with the Federal government and the rest was history. States rights don't exist anymore because of stupid fucking rednecks who couldn't act in a way that tolerable the rest of civilization. If the battle had come down to health care, or drug laws, or basically any other issue except slavery we would still have the 9th and 10th amendments. If I haven't said it before, fuck Confederates.
I don't hold on too much hope for state rights making a resurgence, thanks to my home state of Arizona. We are seeing again people hold onto unreasonable demands (the right it ID anyone anytime) and hiding behind state rights. Normal, educated people will never side with this totalitarian approach and, in time, more state rights will be destroyed by angry racists.
Its not the rewriting that is important. It is the deconstruction and reconstruction from scratch that is important. If you pour over a piece of someone else's code, document it, talk about it, sleep with it, whatever, you still will not be as intimately familiar with the code as someone who wrote it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with starting with someone else's well documented piece of code, reverse engineering it, and implementing a "inspired" version of your own. It goes a long way to understand problems you would never get a chance to understand.
Think about it this way, all sorting algorithms have been written a million times. Still, students have to struggle through implementations every semester so they learn. This is the same thing. Its not wasting time, it is improving oneself.
If this were true then every farmer would be doing it. There is no economic incentive to use a less efficient method of farming out of spite for the environment.
This is just a diversion so that those with money invested have time to get that money out before the majority of investors wake up and realize there are huge real problems. The Greek economic crisis is just a taste of the problems to come as developed economies have taken dangerously high proportions of debt to bail out their banks.
The paper says that small and medium sized businesses are often targets and that they rarely have the resources to mitigate the attacks. Seems to me like this is a great reason to move to cloud computing. I would think 99% of businesses would be better off letting Google protect their servers than trying to find away around these attacks themselves.
I read a paper about a decade ago (which I found thanks to Slashdot) describing how China would "hypothetically" wage a war against the US and win without firing a shot. I can't find the paper any more, but it was written by four Chinese generals. Over the last decade things have pretty much played out exactly like the paper laid things out: an economic assault, a propaganda assault, and an electronic assault. If anyone knows the paper I would love to see it again -- I think it even got turned into a book.
One day, long from now, will people wonder why we didn't see the attack coming until it was way too late?
I guess when you cut math education enough we get people like you.
If there are 45 million uninsured, and health care reform will cost $800 billion - $1 trillion then we are spending about $20,000 per person for health insurance.
Its people like you, with no basic math skills that let politicians get away with this shit.
There is a big difference between regulating an industry and taking over an industry. Take the health care debate, for example. It would cost exactly $0 to pass laws that says "Insurance companies cannot deny you for a preexisting condition". But that doesn't give the government control over the industry, instead they want to spend $800 billion to be an insurance company.
The president Silvio Berlusconi and his family own 45% of all media in the country (http://ketupa.net/berlusconi.htm). He regularly uses his political position to personally enrich himself and his family.
Google came into the country and threatened his source of income by offering a media platform not controlled by the Berlusconi's. This has nothing to do with the autistic boy in the video, but everything to do with the retarded president.
First, the US still sells wheat cheaply to the rest of the world, this hasn't changed.
Second, the US wasn't an industrial power until after the Civil war and really didn't take off until after WWI.
Third, the US had (still has) much greater access to raw materials within its borders. The Chinese environment is quickly degrading into a nightmare, and the US has more forests today than any time since Lewis and Clarke. Not to mention huge reserves of almost every other natural resources either within the US or within Canada.
Fourth, the US had a representative government (barring minorities and women in some places) that allowed for grievances to be aired and addressed. China does not. China will implode under the weight of its totalitarian regime.
Also, your numbers are flawed. I know Wikipedia is a great source of facts, but I would rather defer to this report prepared for Congress:
According to that report in 2005 China exported $200 billion more products to the US than they imported. By any measure $200 billion is a significant fraction of the Chinese GDP and at least 5%. That $200 billion is %1.4 of the US's GDP. Moreover, while the US can easily find new sources for imported goods, there is no equivalent market for Chinese goods.
Besides imports, the US is the one of the biggest sources of FDI. Meaning, all those factories operating in China depend on US money to operate.
Demographically the Chinese are double screwed. 4 times the population of the US is confined to the area the size of the continental US. As another poster mentioned, the Chinese are cursed with way more men than women and single sexually frustrated men generally do not lead to a stable society.
Long story short, China will not overtake the US economically in 2020, or 2050, or ever.
Now, if they adopted a representative government, abandoned the one-child policy, and invaded Siberia, then there would be something to compare.
Why was the solution a bailout? It seems to me we got into this mess because large numbers of people don't understand the concept of mortgages, especially principal and interest. Why wasn't the solution more math education?
Every student should have to answer this question to graduate:
"A teacher makes $40,000 per year. Her house costs $500,000. What interest rate can the teacher afford for her house?" Answer: Nothing. The teacher can never afford a $500,000 house.
If capitalism was really working then the government would not have underwritten these loans (Fannie / Freddie Mac), the teachers would not have bought their McMansions, and we wouldn't have had a crash / bailout.
It seems to me every time there is an article about China on Slashdot about 100 A/C's show up to bash the US and proclaim how great China's system is in comparison. I saw your post and assumed you were one these propagandists posting under you own identity. I jumped to an incorrect conclusion, that was my bad.
The first problem is this is an article about why the Chinese government is not trustworthy. There is not reason to bring up the US unless you are trying to advance your anti-US rhetoric.
Secondly, the US's political system needs to be given credit. All humans are fallible the but the US system allows the sins to be aired and addressed. China's does not.
People equate Chinese problems with US problems in an attempt to put both governments on equal footing. There is no equal footing. The Chinese leaders are brutal oppressive thugs that are unrestrained by a broken political system. The US leaders are brutal oppressive thugs that are restrained by a working political system.
Slashdot Mirror
This minor distinction doesn't matter much to me. I was one of the individuals taken in 100% by the claims that we would be out of oil by 1997. There was no qualifications, it was pretty cut and dry: no oil in 1997. On top of that natural gas was supposed be gone in another 15 years. Acid rain and the ozone layer would kill us from above. And landfills would cover the entire continental US if we didn't act fast. I bought in, I bought in hard. I debated. I spread the propaganda. I berated those who stood in my way as denialists and hating the earth. I was wrong.
If I were to continue to accept the environmentalist position, after being proven wrong from most of my life, I would be no better than an abused wife in a battered relationship.
That somebody has convinced you a lower standard of living is a desirable attribute makes me sad.
If you keep up with the calm rational thinking we may not have the social panic required to pass hastily thought-out, problem-ridden federal government mandated solutions. Then what?
This is just a guess, but one reason you may see the affluent people denying peak oil because affluent people may see things differently than you do. Affluent people often have the belief that they are in control of their own destiny, that their rewards will be in proportion to the fruits of their labors. Outside factors like Peak Oil are just roadblocks that aren't going to stand in their way of trying make their lives better.
I mean, really what are these people supposed to do? Tell their kids how shitty things may get? Should they go into panic and depression? Or should they just keep going to work and try to acquire the resources they and their family will need to get through Peak Oil or Zombies or any number of apocalyptic events that apparently WILL happen in the next couple years?
Bob Parsons was at the right place at the right time and sold a 2nd rate Tax Software package to Inuit who was afloat in internet bubble money. He took the 250 million or so, gave half to his ex-wife and burned through almost $125 million dollars before making GoDaddy.com profitable. He's not a Davey Crockett or a Daniel Boone -- he's bad business man who got lucky once and is still living off the fats of others' labors.
Nope this isn't how it works. GoDaddy pays ICANN a fee and the primary registrar for each domain. They used to sell NET/COM/ORG domains for $1.99 and pay $7.25, making up the difference on upsells. I don't know the fee now, but if they renew a domain for $10 they don't keep $10.
Considering the US has a trade deficit of over $226 billion dollars annually, and most Chinese goods are low skilled manufacturing that are easily replaced from other sources, and most US sales to China are high tech non-replaceable products, I'd say there is 0% chance of a trade embargo from China hurting the US in any meaningful way. On the other hand, such a move would utterly destroy the Chinese economy while we happily send the new cash to India. =P
The history of the destruction of the constitution predates FDR and the Civil War. I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. But I would like to point out that the first infraction was Thomas Jefferson himself. His deal for the Louisiana Purchase was 1) not supported by the constitution, and 2) contrary to his own beliefs in "strict constructionism". Before this there were two camps: those who said the government had only the rights laid out in the constitution (strict constructionists) and those who believed the government had all rights not specifically forbidden by the constitution. Thomas Jefferson did not have the moral authority to both support the constitution's most strict interpretation AND buy Louisiana.
I blame Southerners (Confederates) for destroying the rest of the constitution. Before 1865 there was a gentle balance between states rights and federal rights with states given deference in accordance with amendments 9 and 10. The lecherous confederates (I do live in the South) screwed everything up for the rest of us by insisting on holding onto slavery. Faced with the choice between slavery and the 9th/10th amendments most reasonable people sided with the Federal government and the rest was history. States rights don't exist anymore because of stupid fucking rednecks who couldn't act in a way that tolerable the rest of civilization. If the battle had come down to health care, or drug laws, or basically any other issue except slavery we would still have the 9th and 10th amendments. If I haven't said it before, fuck Confederates.
I don't hold on too much hope for state rights making a resurgence, thanks to my home state of Arizona. We are seeing again people hold onto unreasonable demands (the right it ID anyone anytime) and hiding behind state rights. Normal, educated people will never side with this totalitarian approach and, in time, more state rights will be destroyed by angry racists.
Its not the rewriting that is important. It is the deconstruction and reconstruction from scratch that is important. If you pour over a piece of someone else's code, document it, talk about it, sleep with it, whatever, you still will not be as intimately familiar with the code as someone who wrote it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with starting with someone else's well documented piece of code, reverse engineering it, and implementing a "inspired" version of your own. It goes a long way to understand problems you would never get a chance to understand.
Think about it this way, all sorting algorithms have been written a million times. Still, students have to struggle through implementations every semester so they learn. This is the same thing. Its not wasting time, it is improving oneself.
If this were true then every farmer would be doing it. There is no economic incentive to use a less efficient method of farming out of spite for the environment.
That's like saying a frog will eventually mate with a horse and create a breed of amphibious horses.
This is just a diversion so that those with money invested have time to get that money out before the majority of investors wake up and realize there are huge real problems. The Greek economic crisis is just a taste of the problems to come as developed economies have taken dangerously high proportions of debt to bail out their banks.
The bankers run everything. /paranoid rant
The paper says that small and medium sized businesses are often targets and that they rarely have the resources to mitigate the attacks. Seems to me like this is a great reason to move to cloud computing. I would think 99% of businesses would be better off letting Google protect their servers than trying to find away around these attacks themselves.
I read a paper about a decade ago (which I found thanks to Slashdot) describing how China would "hypothetically" wage a war against the US and win without firing a shot. I can't find the paper any more, but it was written by four Chinese generals. Over the last decade things have pretty much played out exactly like the paper laid things out: an economic assault, a propaganda assault, and an electronic assault. If anyone knows the paper I would love to see it again -- I think it even got turned into a book.
One day, long from now, will people wonder why we didn't see the attack coming until it was way too late?
I guess when you cut math education enough we get people like you.
If there are 45 million uninsured, and health care reform will cost $800 billion - $1 trillion then we are spending about $20,000 per person for health insurance.
Its people like you, with no basic math skills that let politicians get away with this shit.
Why does it cost $800 billion?
Combine the revenues of the top 25 health insurance companies in the US and your still at a fraction of $800 billion:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/industries/223/index.html
For $800 billion you could buy the top 25 companies based on market capitalization.
There is a big difference between regulating an industry and taking over an industry. Take the health care debate, for example. It would cost exactly $0 to pass laws that says "Insurance companies cannot deny you for a preexisting condition". But that doesn't give the government control over the industry, instead they want to spend $800 billion to be an insurance company.
Regulation is fine. Involvement is not.
The president Silvio Berlusconi and his family own 45% of all media in the country (http://ketupa.net/berlusconi.htm). He regularly uses his political position to personally enrich himself and his family.
Google came into the country and threatened his source of income by offering a media platform not controlled by the Berlusconi's. This has nothing to do with the autistic boy in the video, but everything to do with the retarded president.
Your analogy is flawed.
First, the US still sells wheat cheaply to the rest of the world, this hasn't changed.
Second, the US wasn't an industrial power until after the Civil war and really didn't take off until after WWI.
Third, the US had (still has) much greater access to raw materials within its borders. The Chinese environment is quickly degrading into a nightmare, and the US has more forests today than any time since Lewis and Clarke. Not to mention huge reserves of almost every other natural resources either within the US or within Canada.
Fourth, the US had a representative government (barring minorities and women in some places) that allowed for grievances to be aired and addressed. China does not. China will implode under the weight of its totalitarian regime.
Also, your numbers are flawed. I know Wikipedia is a great source of facts, but I would rather defer to this report prepared for Congress:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL31403.pdf
According to that report in 2005 China exported $200 billion more products to the US than they imported. By any measure $200 billion is a significant fraction of the Chinese GDP and at least 5%. That $200 billion is %1.4 of the US's GDP. Moreover, while the US can easily find new sources for imported goods, there is no equivalent market for Chinese goods.
Besides imports, the US is the one of the biggest sources of FDI. Meaning, all those factories operating in China depend on US money to operate.
Demographically the Chinese are double screwed. 4 times the population of the US is confined to the area the size of the continental US. As another poster mentioned, the Chinese are cursed with way more men than women and single sexually frustrated men generally do not lead to a stable society.
Long story short, China will not overtake the US economically in 2020, or 2050, or ever.
Now, if they adopted a representative government, abandoned the one-child policy, and invaded Siberia, then there would be something to compare.
Why was the solution a bailout? It seems to me we got into this mess because large numbers of people don't understand the concept of mortgages, especially principal and interest. Why wasn't the solution more math education?
Every student should have to answer this question to graduate:
"A teacher makes $40,000 per year. Her house costs $500,000. What interest rate can the teacher afford for her house?"
Answer: Nothing. The teacher can never afford a $500,000 house.
If capitalism was really working then the government would not have underwritten these loans (Fannie / Freddie Mac), the teachers would not have bought their McMansions, and we wouldn't have had a crash / bailout.
BTW, I am freaked out too. I am afraid that people don't see how terrible the Chinese system is and that alone will allow it to be implemented here.
OK, I was wrong. I apologize.
It seems to me every time there is an article about China on Slashdot about 100 A/C's show up to bash the US and proclaim how great China's system is in comparison. I saw your post and assumed you were one these propagandists posting under you own identity. I jumped to an incorrect conclusion, that was my bad.
The Chinese leadership's decisions directly caused the deaths of 30 million people.
Just like George Bush's decisions directly caused the deaths of millions of Iraqis.
Both are murder.
The big difference is the US has a mechanism to get rid of murders, China does not.
Comparing is great. Equating is terrible.
The first problem is this is an article about why the Chinese government is not trustworthy. There is not reason to bring up the US unless you are trying to advance your anti-US rhetoric.
Secondly, the US's political system needs to be given credit. All humans are fallible the but the US system allows the sins to be aired and addressed. China's does not.
People equate Chinese problems with US problems in an attempt to put both governments on equal footing. There is no equal footing. The Chinese leaders are brutal oppressive thugs that are unrestrained by a broken political system. The US leaders are brutal oppressive thugs that are restrained by a working political system.
http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/shanghai-black-girl-lou-jing-racist-chinese-netizens/
At least blacks can appear on TV in the US.