1. Free in this context is a figure of speech, intended to mean "free at the time of service." If it confuses you less, imagine my above comment rewritten to say the above. We all know TANSTAFL.
By your reasoning, are we fixing the price on police and the operation of a court system? Also, do you believe things are better now that we no longer "fix" the price on electricity?
You raise a great point about the many cases where markets simply do not function effectively. I'd say the right idea when applying Socialist principles is for the state to do exactly what the markets can't. In fact, you could give that as a fairly effective definition of Socialism. Things like regulating securities (i.e. the SEC) and providing good education (the U.S. system was allowed to rot - but the best educational systems - not schools - in the world are state run, to the last) were all picked up by the state over time, because eventually no amount of pressure from the Laissez Faire capitalists could stop the populations of the world's more democratic nations from finally fixing the problems of "letting the market do everything" and pretending (Soviet-style) it's working great even when it's not.
2. Why are you still being so vague about your ideas? What, no comments about the relationship Gold Standard? No comments about Smoot-Hawley?
Let me ask you this: do you imagine that you can have a currency without "price fixing?" Someone must run a mint, and decide how much to print. The price is always "fixed" in some sense.
Do think the market can make currency function without human agency (and "fixing")?
See how this strikes you. No disaster as bad as the GD can happen without multiple contributing factors. What do you think happens when, in a Laissez Faire economy, oligopolies have developed such a strong ability to fix prices that the "market" is no longer functioning? (In fact, this is the natural consequence of every Laissez Faire economy - capital naturally concentrates until in many market segments there is no longer a market.) What if these oligopolies, which now represent a psuedo-command economy, fail to respond to a deflationary event by lowering prices in a timely manner (chalk it up to common merchant psychology)?
Oh, retailers are on the front lines and can see they need to cut their cost for a cup of coffee because no one bought any last week. But what if the malaise is so structural that the cost of materials all the way up the supply chain is affected? Say, railroads, steel, etc... ?
Here's another factor for you: During 1928 through the first three quarters of 1929, by just about any measure, the U.S. experienced "the highest income inequalities in American History" (American Inequality: A Macroeconomic History by Williamson and Lindert).
Weren't aware of that one? Think perhaps it's coincidence?
Or is that your "free market" (I think perhaps a better word is "boneless market") naturally flopping over to the point where it ceased to function, as they always do, in every single place Laissez Faire has ever been practiced?
Remember that factoid that consumer spending is roughly 2/3's of our economy? What do you think happens when consumers stop spending (because of wage drops, fear, bank failures, and effective price increases on consumer goods)?
Throw in irresponsible monetary policy and then try to fix the problem by starting a tarriff war with your trading partners and you have the worst economic disaster in history.
3. OK, so we agree here. I think what we disagree on is how the government must accomplish that. Breaking up a monopoly is important, but so is the longer-term strategic stewardship of capital. So-called "progressive" economic policies and social programs that reduce economic inequality and create social mobility are actually the very essence of free market competition - because without mobility, again, where's your competition?
If you dont have this, money concentrates - which past a certain point (diff
First of all, Socialism is a big umbrella term that you should just think of as "expensive social programs." If we raise taxes and build more public schools, if we raise taxes again and have free healthcare, if we raise taxes again and make university-level education free... that's Socialism. Not saying all those are good ideas (though Europe seems to like them). It's about wealth redistribution, to try to flatten out the natural tendency of wealth to concentrate and destroy the economy.
Socialism has nothing to do with price fixing whatsoever. Price fixing is closer to Communism - or more simply a command economy - another proven failure.
Second of all, you're being kind of vague about your "Great Depression" theory. You've said something about price fixing and something about the world wars...
Nothing to do with oligopolies, or such a great percentage of the U.S. capital being concentrated in so few hands that the market no longer functioned effectively?
Would you say the regulatory regimes enacted since the Great Depression were a failure?
Lastly, bad welfare and housing policy don't prove Socialism a failure any more than Debbie Gibson proves pop music a failure. Public schools failed because we weren't Socialist enough - we stopped adding money and kept adding children. The Jimmy Carter economy... interesting term. More popularly known as the Oil Embargo, I believe?
I'm surprised anyone but Democrats (which I'm not, incidentally) still play the president/economy game, since the economy very consistently does better under the helm of American Liberals (citation) - at worst, you can chalk it up to coincidence.
Are you aware of the irony in what you say? There were a variety of different regimes in South America. The military dictators came, courtesy of the CIA, whenever a sufficiently democratic nation started having ideas about modernizing its economy and creating some European-style social programs. They enforced laissez faire capitalism on the populations long after they were desperate to be rid of it - it was their primary purpose.
The region as a whole was something of a playground for the ridiculous economic dogmas of right-wingers in the intelligence community (since their economic and social loss was, in the cases of some American companies, our gain). Our morass in Iraq is a little reminiscent, as Bush appointees in the CPA were busy enacting similar policies, such as privatizing government assets, flat taxes, and ending the country's socialized healthcare program, in that early honeymoon after 2003.
In the 70's and 80's you got all this with a nod and a wink; Bush senior's generation knew these little games were OK for keeping down the price of bananas but hardly a nation building program. I wonder if this new generation of apparatchiks actually drinks the kool aid.
In general, the proponents "free enterprise" can't define it. In special cases, they can, but choose not to, and play games instead (i.e. talking about "free trade" rather than the end of labor regulation, which is what that really means).
Strictly speaking there is no such thing as a "Free Market" - only anarchy, where markets do not exist, and the strong rule the weak. All markets run on rules. "Free Enterprise" is lately becoming a code for Laissez Faire capitalism, a ruinous permutation of the rules that was a notorious economic and social disaster.
The more socialist policies that America has (until recently) employed for the last 50 years, by comparison, are what actually "made this country so great." You had laissez faire in South America - where did it get them? Meanwhile our bitter lessons learned from the Great Depression led us to socialist-lite economic policies that created the wealthiest nation on earth.
Capitalism is not some magic religious trinket you can wave over a society and create a utopia. It's a class of machine. It needs to be well-designed, tuned, and maintained.
For it to work, you have to foster competition through (for instance) vigorous use of antitrust law. There's no market if one participant can prevent any other potential players from entering the market. Elementary. Or are they re-writing those history books these days?
Wealth begets wealth, so the Christians say - but it's obvious that money does make money. You also need systems that redistribute the wealth (for instance, our once-great public educational system). Stratification of capital leaves you with a few people who have orders more money they can ever spend, while everyone else lacks education, leisure, and even basic buying power. And why do you care, Mr. Libertarian? Our economy is 2/3's consumer spending. Doh. It's also powered by a millions-strong, well educated middle class.
Is it really that bad that Microsoft and Novell made this deal?
Yes.
Microsoft is the author of SCO.
They are continuing to do anything and everything they can to sabotage Linux specifically and open-source in general, not out of any particular malice, but just because it's business, and that's how they interpret their duty to their shareholders.
There are very few reasons why it would be worth it to Microsoft to make such a big payout to Novell to "cross-license" ludicrous "software patents" with them. A rather transparent continuation of the quasi-legal FUD campaign against Linux is the only really credible one.
Microsoft is a monopoly. Their engineering has improved since the 90's, but it's part of their corporate culture to compete by means other than quality and price.
The thesis here is a little murky, but the author has enough of a point for me to wipe Novell-related Linux products (though that's easy for me to say, as I don't actually use any that I know of).
In brief: Microsoft has cross-licensed software patents with Novell. The idea is to legitimize their patents before they attempt to sue other Linux distro vendors (and probably others).
The author is correct in their assertion that, if Novell has done so (and it appears that they may have), they are actually now in violation of the GPL. From section 7:
For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
The endgame is where I lose the guy a little on the specifics, but it doesn't really matter. The point here is another anti-Linux legal FUD campaign. suffice it to say, this is hardly a conspiracy theory. Microsoft is the direct author of SCO.
Say it with me, kids. Software Patents are Insane.
Software Patents are Insane.
No one can read 200,000 of them, or the few thousand new ones each day. No human being can validate code against the patent base. All software is a ticking patent timebomb. It is (vaguely) legalized barratry, and the rest of the world (who has soundly avoided this insanity) will be laughing at the American software industry all the way to the bank.
There is no solution short of immediate and complete invalidation of all current and future patents on software.
Futures indicating a drop; the fortune tellers are trying to fit different narratives on it; the surprise in the size of the upset victory, the recounts adding "a climate of uncertainty," legislative gridlock, etc.
When will this sickening spectacle end? How badly do we want to handicap American ingenuity - do we really want to eventually hand the industry to Europe and Asia (places without barratry- I mean, software patents)?
At a minimum, it pushes some of the other stories off the front page; at the moment, that could only be good. Most of the other stories today have to do with horrific acts by Republicans and their religious advisors, or the awful failure of the war.
More ambitiously, it could be said to, at least in theory, convey a more positive message about our progress in Iraq. They would have to do what they did, though - time it very, very close to election day - because even within days, it will be clear that both the sentence and the execution are relative non-events, and that the low intensity civil war for control of Iraq will not really be affected by Hussein (or his death) - a net negative for neocons and hawks.
Some people will be happy, some will not. Either way, they could have been happy a week later without the appearance of impropriety further hurting the credibility of their government.
Obviously if the government stabilizes and establishes order it's a good thing. The whole point of my post is that an appearance of impropriety, like the one today, undermines that. So it's now obvious to everyone what your guesses are worth.
Some people in Baghdad celebrated, others did not, and are undoubtedly busy planning some more of their usual, different kinds of "celebrations," or don't you follow the news.
Using generalizations the way you do, talking about "the people in Baghdad", tells me all I need to know about your level of understanding. Are those the same "people in Baghdad" who helped kill 100 troops last month? The same people who are both Sunni and Shiite, Iranian and Kurd? Not all "people in Baghdad" agree, or haven't you heard.
This is the thing about the appearance of impropriety. It's an important, and formal, concept in credible court systems like those in America.
If there may be an appereance that the verdict was planned or timed, you do things to avoid even that appearance.
Such as not announcing a verdict on the weekend before the U.S. elections.
I'm not saying for sure they timed it, because I just don't know. But I do know for sure that they could have waited 3 days and changed the whole image of the thing.
That's a deliberate attempt to time the news with the election, right?
What do you believe?
If you are an American Republican, you will incur the wrath of your fellow party members unless you answer yes to both questions.
What do you think the Iraqis believe?
Given that there are very few Republicans in Iraq, do you suppose it's possible that they might take a more cynical view on the timing of the verdict?
Could an appearance of impropriety by the Iraqi court could be, by far, the most reckless of the "October Surprises"? (Though neither in October, nor a surprise...)
U.S. troops could actually die in greater numbers because of such blows to the credibility of Iraq's supposedly new, independent government (and its courts).
Lightning-fast enumeration and listing of all Xbox Live® Arcade games on the console.
Indeed, enumeration of lists has been painfully slow, and the need to needlessly flip between screens causes you to have to do it over and over for many common operations (i.e. downloading more than one video or demo, hello?), making the user experience overall quite poor.
I wonder what exactly they changed to fix it? This is vague; it could refer to the bizarre way the 360 seems to count up its known games at human-visible speed, or possibly enumeration in the marketplace? Could this be Microsoft getting over its religion about using stupidly verbose XML web services for wire protocols? Or simply implementing caching to try to bandaid the problem?
Issuers will be able to see rates of compromise accross types of security measures. They watch this sort of thing diligently. It's practically the core of their business.
If it's as bad as I think it could be, the news will get out. The media will probably love the story.
Let them do this. I think it's time these idiots suffered a really big catastrophe; it'd probably the most (only?) effective way to really set the tone re. RFID.
Meantime, don't carry these cards yourselves, and avoid banks that use them...
You're quite right - competition is not a panacea. That's why I was careful to say "largely."
It's a tool in the societal toolbox. I think in this case it worked, and in many cases it does. But it's hardly an argument for laissez faire capitalism or libertarianism. Witness the US's boondoogle with privatized electric utilities (i.e. blackouts and doubled rates)...
Once again, competition wins. Microsoft, after leveraging their monopoly power to win the browser wars, had summarily decided that there was no longer anything else in IE that needed work. IE was effectively frozen for years, bugs and all - cracked open, by stern policy, only for security fixes.
It took a free software effort with no hope of profit to do so, but MS has at long, long last bestirred themselves to code again. This has once again demonstrated the baseline of what MS' monopoly will do. Since it is not economically feasible to confront MS's monopoly powers, the commercial market for product X (browsers, office apps, OSs, etc) is effectively destroyed (sorry Opera), but at a minimum, MS is forced to compete against what the community can develop for free.
Never forget - human beings are lazy by design, and so are our organizations. No business, no politician, no religious leader, will exhibit much virtue except under threat. This is why competition and democracy have been largely effective as policy.
Whether MS wins or loses the browser war (or these days, the browser cold war), or the OS war, we have already won, because we have pushed them to innovate, to make their products more stable, more credible, and more powerful.
This can't be about individual cases. This has been going on long past long enough.
This is about taking collective and massive action to deal with it. This is a country full of supposed free speech lovers - let's see who stays silent and who talks about reforming these loopholes that let the wealthy, be they business, government entities, or religions (Scientology anyone?) use the courts to do an end run around human rights.
Actually I wasn't thinking Abrams wouldn't go over with the younger crowd - just made a joke that the Olsen twins would.:)
I mean, if you're a fan, no offense. There's no accounting for taste, and I think Class of 1999 was a good movie, so take me with a grain of salt.
I think Abrams' approach is all style and no substance. Kind of like a Chris Carter-lite. Take Alias for instance. Obviously written by someone whose sole source material is other spy fiction. But this isn't his biggest sin. He clearly learned in drama class that family relationships are like the lucky rabbit's foot of storytelling, and he's rubbing that little tchotchke so hard it's catching on fire. Her mother killed the father of her boyfriend who now works for her father, hunting down, for instance, her aunt... Jesus christ. OK, Darth Vader being luke's father - that was cool in the 70's. But how are you supposed to take this shit seriously? Jerry Springer is secretly executive producing it under an alias.
And, right or wrong, there's no fans who need take their shit more seriously than trek fans.:D
I understand that he can shoot in expensive filmstock, and with a phone call can arrange to have Jennifer Garner doing Krav Maga to house music in a leather bustier. This is all well and good. But his obvious boredom with plot and consistency... In a way it's hard to think of a better person to torture trek fans with. If they just went out and hired Akiva Goldsman then at least we'd all know not to watch it. But this could be worse, because it might be better...
I have to grudgingly admit the guy is better than Berman and Braga. Basically because they were about the worst in the business. I think the Olsen Twins would have made better trek than those guys. At least appeal more to the youth market.
But if you've watched Alias or Lost, you have an idea where this is headed. The franchise needed a Terry Gilliam or a James Cameron. Or for god sakes, get Peter Jackson. He'd be bankable. Fuck it. Get me John Carpenter, or Edgar Wright, or fucking Dan O'Bannon before you bring me "J.J."... that motherfucker will reveal that Kirk killed Spock's mother, and McCoy is Spock's cousin. That's his idea of a "twist." I don't think he's going to be taking any interesting creative risks.
Oh well. At least it's not Joss Whedon.
Whatever happened to Nicholas Meyer anyway? They lose his phone number or something?
Slashdot Mirror
1. Free in this context is a figure of speech, intended to mean "free at the time of service." If it confuses you less, imagine my above comment rewritten to say the above. We all know TANSTAFL .
By your reasoning, are we fixing the price on police and the operation of a court system? Also, do you believe things are better now that we no longer "fix" the price on electricity?
You raise a great point about the many cases where markets simply do not function effectively. I'd say the right idea when applying Socialist principles is for the state to do exactly what the markets can't. In fact, you could give that as a fairly effective definition of Socialism. Things like regulating securities (i.e. the SEC) and providing good education (the U.S. system was allowed to rot - but the best educational systems - not schools - in the world are state run, to the last) were all picked up by the state over time, because eventually no amount of pressure from the Laissez Faire capitalists could stop the populations of the world's more democratic nations from finally fixing the problems of "letting the market do everything" and pretending (Soviet-style) it's working great even when it's not.
2. Why are you still being so vague about your ideas? What, no comments about the relationship Gold Standard? No comments about Smoot-Hawley?
Let me ask you this: do you imagine that you can have a currency without "price fixing?" Someone must run a mint, and decide how much to print. The price is always "fixed" in some sense.
Do think the market can make currency function without human agency (and "fixing")?
See how this strikes you. No disaster as bad as the GD can happen without multiple contributing factors. What do you think happens when, in a Laissez Faire economy, oligopolies have developed such a strong ability to fix prices that the "market" is no longer functioning? (In fact, this is the natural consequence of every Laissez Faire economy - capital naturally concentrates until in many market segments there is no longer a market.) What if these oligopolies, which now represent a psuedo-command economy, fail to respond to a deflationary event by lowering prices in a timely manner (chalk it up to common merchant psychology)?
Oh, retailers are on the front lines and can see they need to cut their cost for a cup of coffee because no one bought any last week. But what if the malaise is so structural that the cost of materials all the way up the supply chain is affected? Say, railroads, steel, etc... ?
Here's another factor for you: During 1928 through the first three quarters of 1929, by just about any measure, the U.S. experienced "the highest income inequalities in American History" (American Inequality: A Macroeconomic History by Williamson and Lindert).
Weren't aware of that one? Think perhaps it's coincidence?
Or is that your "free market" (I think perhaps a better word is "boneless market") naturally flopping over to the point where it ceased to function, as they always do, in every single place Laissez Faire has ever been practiced?
Remember that factoid that consumer spending is roughly 2/3's of our economy? What do you think happens when consumers stop spending (because of wage drops, fear, bank failures, and effective price increases on consumer goods)?
Throw in irresponsible monetary policy and then try to fix the problem by starting a tarriff war with your trading partners and you have the worst economic disaster in history.
3. OK, so we agree here. I think what we disagree on is how the government must accomplish that. Breaking up a monopoly is important, but so is the longer-term strategic stewardship of capital. So-called "progressive" economic policies and social programs that reduce economic inequality and create social mobility are actually the very essence of free market competition - because without mobility, again, where's your competition?
If you dont have this, money concentrates - which past a certain point (diff
First of all, Socialism is a big umbrella term that you should just think of as "expensive social programs." If we raise taxes and build more public schools, if we raise taxes again and have free healthcare, if we raise taxes again and make university-level education free... that's Socialism. Not saying all those are good ideas (though Europe seems to like them). It's about wealth redistribution, to try to flatten out the natural tendency of wealth to concentrate and destroy the economy.
Socialism has nothing to do with price fixing whatsoever. Price fixing is closer to Communism - or more simply a command economy - another proven failure.
Second of all, you're being kind of vague about your "Great Depression" theory. You've said something about price fixing and something about the world wars...
Nothing to do with oligopolies, or such a great percentage of the U.S. capital being concentrated in so few hands that the market no longer functioned effectively?
Would you say the regulatory regimes enacted since the Great Depression were a failure?
Lastly, bad welfare and housing policy don't prove Socialism a failure any more than Debbie Gibson proves pop music a failure. Public schools failed because we weren't Socialist enough - we stopped adding money and kept adding children. The Jimmy Carter economy... interesting term. More popularly known as the Oil Embargo, I believe?
I'm surprised anyone but Democrats (which I'm not, incidentally) still play the president/economy game, since the economy very consistently does better under the helm of American Liberals (citation) - at worst, you can chalk it up to coincidence.
Are you aware of the irony in what you say? There were a variety of different regimes in South America. The military dictators came, courtesy of the CIA, whenever a sufficiently democratic nation started having ideas about modernizing its economy and creating some European-style social programs. They enforced laissez faire capitalism on the populations long after they were desperate to be rid of it - it was their primary purpose.
The region as a whole was something of a playground for the ridiculous economic dogmas of right-wingers in the intelligence community (since their economic and social loss was, in the cases of some American companies, our gain). Our morass in Iraq is a little
reminiscent, as Bush appointees in the CPA were busy enacting similar policies, such as privatizing government assets, flat taxes, and ending the country's socialized healthcare program, in that early honeymoon after 2003.
In the 70's and 80's you got all this with a nod and a wink; Bush senior's generation knew these little games were OK for keeping down the price of bananas but hardly a nation building program. I wonder if this new generation of apparatchiks actually drinks the kool aid.
Thank you sir. Well said.
In general, the proponents "free enterprise" can't define it. In special cases, they can, but choose not to, and play games instead (i.e. talking about "free trade" rather than the end of labor regulation, which is what that really means).
Strictly speaking there is no such thing as a "Free Market" - only anarchy, where markets do not exist, and the strong rule the weak. All markets run on rules. "Free Enterprise" is lately becoming a code for Laissez Faire capitalism, a ruinous permutation of the rules that was a notorious economic and social disaster.
The more socialist policies that America has (until recently) employed for the last 50 years, by comparison, are what actually "made this country so great." You had laissez faire in South America - where did it get them? Meanwhile our bitter lessons learned from the Great Depression led us to socialist-lite economic policies that created the wealthiest nation on earth.
Capitalism is not some magic religious trinket you can wave over a society and create a utopia. It's a class of machine. It needs to be well-designed, tuned, and maintained.
For it to work, you have to foster competition through (for instance) vigorous use of antitrust law. There's no market if one participant can prevent any other potential players from entering the market. Elementary. Or are they re-writing those history books these days?
Wealth begets wealth, so the Christians say - but it's obvious that money does make money. You also need systems that redistribute the wealth (for instance, our once-great public educational system). Stratification of capital leaves you with a few people who have orders more money they can ever spend, while everyone else lacks education, leisure, and even basic buying power. And why do you care, Mr. Libertarian? Our economy is 2/3's consumer spending. Doh. It's also powered by a millions-strong, well educated middle class.
Is it really that bad that Microsoft and Novell made this deal?
Yes.
Microsoft is the author of SCO.
They are continuing to do anything and everything they can to sabotage Linux specifically and open-source in general, not out of any particular malice, but just because it's business, and that's how they interpret their duty to their shareholders.
There are very few reasons why it would be worth it to Microsoft to make such a big payout to Novell to "cross-license" ludicrous "software patents" with them. A rather transparent continuation of the quasi-legal FUD campaign against Linux is the only really credible one.
Microsoft is a monopoly. Their engineering has improved since the 90's, but it's part of their corporate culture to compete by means other than quality and price.
The thesis here is a little murky, but the author has enough of a point for me to wipe Novell-related Linux products (though that's easy for me to say, as I don't actually use any that I know of).
In brief: Microsoft has cross-licensed software patents with Novell. The idea is to legitimize their patents before they attempt to sue other Linux distro vendors (and probably others).
The author is correct in their assertion that, if Novell has done so (and it appears that they may have), they are actually now in violation of the GPL. From section 7:
For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
The endgame is where I lose the guy a little on the specifics, but it doesn't really matter. The point here is another anti-Linux legal FUD campaign. suffice it to say, this is hardly a conspiracy theory. Microsoft is the direct author of SCO.
Say it with me, kids. Software Patents are Insane.
Software Patents are Insane.
No one can read 200,000 of them, or the few thousand new ones each day. No human being can validate code against the patent base. All software is a ticking patent timebomb. It is (vaguely) legalized barratry, and the rest of the world (who has soundly avoided this insanity) will be laughing at the American software industry all the way to the bank.
There is no solution short of immediate and complete invalidation of all current and future patents on software.
Futures indicating a drop; the fortune tellers are trying to fit different narratives on it; the surprise in the size of the upset victory, the recounts adding "a climate of uncertainty," legislative gridlock, etc.
i d=ahcGD2TgdAds&refer=home
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&s
Software patents can never work. Ever.
No adult with a brain can argue that they can.
When will this sickening spectacle end? How badly do we want to handicap American ingenuity - do we really want to eventually hand the industry to Europe and Asia (places without barratry- I mean, software patents)?
This deceptive post hinges on the deft equivalence between "a [any?] foreign country" and "Iraq."
At a minimum, it pushes some of the other stories off the front page; at the moment, that could only be good. Most of the other stories today have to do with horrific acts by Republicans and their religious advisors, or the awful failure of the war.
More ambitiously, it could be said to, at least in theory, convey a more positive message about our progress in Iraq. They would have to do what they did, though - time it very, very close to election day - because even within days, it will be clear that both the sentence and the execution are relative non-events, and that the low intensity civil war for control of Iraq will not really be affected by Hussein (or his death) - a net negative for neocons and hawks.
happy people in the street
You're just digging your hole deeper, you know.
Some people will be happy, some will not. Either way, they could have been happy a week later without the appearance of impropriety further hurting the credibility of their government.
I'll go out on a limb here and disagree. I'm just pointing out the social pressures faced by members of the American right-wing.
Not that I'm advocating it, but I notice inaccurately demonizing all members of a party has worked wonders for them.
Yes, I have been following the trial.
Obviously if the government stabilizes and establishes order it's a good thing. The whole point of my post is that an appearance of impropriety, like the one today, undermines that. So it's now obvious to everyone what your guesses are worth.
Some people in Baghdad celebrated, others did not, and are undoubtedly busy planning some more of their usual, different kinds of "celebrations," or don't you follow the news.
Using generalizations the way you do, talking about "the people in Baghdad", tells me all I need to know about your level of understanding. Are those the same "people in Baghdad" who helped kill 100 troops last month? The same people who are both Sunni and Shiite, Iranian and Kurd? Not all "people in Baghdad" agree, or haven't you heard.
And it's spelled "Karl" Rove.
This is the thing about the appearance of impropriety. It's an important, and formal, concept in credible court systems like those in America.
If there may be an appereance that the verdict was planned or timed, you do things to avoid even that appearance.
Such as not announcing a verdict on the weekend before the U.S. elections.
I'm not saying for sure they timed it, because I just don't know. But I do know for sure that they could have waited 3 days and changed the whole image of the thing.
So, Saddam Hussein's verdict, the death sentence, is read 48 hours before the U.S. midterm elections...
That's just a coincidence, right?
But, when Republican congressmen are discovered to be gay pederasts, or famous evangelical ministers are outed for using methamphetamines with male prostitutes and the news comes out in the weeks prior to the election...
That's a deliberate attempt to time the news with the election, right?
What do you believe?
If you are an American Republican, you will incur the wrath of your fellow party members unless you answer yes to both questions.
What do you think the Iraqis believe?
Given that there are very few Republicans in Iraq, do you suppose it's possible that they might take a more cynical view on the timing of the verdict?
Could an appearance of impropriety by the Iraqi court could be, by far, the most reckless of the "October Surprises"? (Though neither in October, nor a surprise...)
U.S. troops could actually die in greater numbers because of such blows to the credibility of Iraq's supposedly new, independent government (and its courts).
Damn right.
Reform it with some gasoline and a lighter.
From the list of changes:
Lightning-fast enumeration and listing of all Xbox Live® Arcade games on the console.
Indeed, enumeration of lists has been painfully slow, and the need to needlessly flip between screens causes you to have to do it over and over for many common operations (i.e. downloading more than one video or demo, hello?), making the user experience overall quite poor.
I wonder what exactly they changed to fix it? This is vague; it could refer to the bizarre way the 360 seems to count up its known games at human-visible speed, or possibly enumeration in the marketplace? Could this be Microsoft getting over its religion about using stupidly verbose XML web services for wire protocols? Or simply implementing caching to try to bandaid the problem?
Issuers will be able to see rates of compromise accross types of security measures. They watch this sort of thing diligently. It's practically the core of their business.
If it's as bad as I think it could be, the news will get out. The media will probably love the story.
Let them do this. I think it's time these idiots suffered a really big catastrophe; it'd probably the most (only?) effective way to really set the tone re. RFID.
Meantime, don't carry these cards yourselves, and avoid banks that use them...
You're quite right - competition is not a panacea. That's why I was careful to say "largely."
It's a tool in the societal toolbox. I think in this case it worked, and in many cases it does. But it's hardly an argument for laissez faire capitalism or libertarianism. Witness the US's boondoogle with privatized electric utilities (i.e. blackouts and doubled rates)...
Once again, competition wins. Microsoft, after leveraging their monopoly power to win the browser wars, had summarily decided that there was no longer anything else in IE that needed work. IE was effectively frozen for years, bugs and all - cracked open, by stern policy, only for security fixes.
It took a free software effort with no hope of profit to do so, but MS has at long, long last bestirred themselves to code again. This has once again demonstrated the baseline of what MS' monopoly will do. Since it is not economically feasible to confront MS's monopoly powers, the commercial market for product X (browsers, office apps, OSs, etc) is effectively destroyed (sorry Opera), but at a minimum, MS is forced to compete against what the community can develop for free.
Never forget - human beings are lazy by design, and so are our organizations. No business, no politician, no religious leader, will exhibit much virtue except under threat. This is why competition and democracy have been largely effective as policy.
Whether MS wins or loses the browser war (or these days, the browser cold war), or the OS war, we have already won, because we have pushed them to innovate, to make their products more stable, more credible, and more powerful.
I'll save my money for a game developer that has some human decency. There are plenty out there.
This sounds like another SLAPP lawsuit.
This can't be about individual cases. This has been going on long past long enough.
This is about taking collective and massive action to deal with it. This is a country full of supposed free speech lovers - let's see who stays silent and who talks about reforming these loopholes that let the wealthy, be they business, government entities, or religions (Scientology anyone?) use the courts to do an end run around human rights.
Actually I wasn't thinking Abrams wouldn't go over with the younger crowd - just made a joke that the Olsen twins would. :)
:D
I mean, if you're a fan, no offense. There's no accounting for taste, and I think Class of 1999 was a good movie, so take me with a grain of salt.
I think Abrams' approach is all style and no substance. Kind of like a Chris Carter-lite. Take Alias for instance. Obviously written by someone whose sole source material is other spy fiction. But this isn't his biggest sin. He clearly learned in drama class that family relationships are like the lucky rabbit's foot of storytelling, and he's rubbing that little tchotchke so hard it's catching on fire. Her mother killed the father of her boyfriend who now works for her father, hunting down, for instance, her aunt... Jesus christ. OK, Darth Vader being luke's father - that was cool in the 70's. But how are you supposed to take this shit seriously? Jerry Springer is secretly executive producing it under an alias.
And, right or wrong, there's no fans who need take their shit more seriously than trek fans.
I understand that he can shoot in expensive filmstock, and with a phone call can arrange to have Jennifer Garner doing Krav Maga to house music in a leather bustier. This is all well and good. But his obvious boredom with plot and consistency... In a way it's hard to think of a better person to torture trek fans with. If they just went out and hired Akiva Goldsman then at least we'd all know not to watch it. But this could be worse, because it might be better...
I have to grudgingly admit the guy is better than Berman and Braga. Basically because they were about the worst in the business. I think the Olsen Twins would have made better trek than those guys. At least appeal more to the youth market.
But if you've watched Alias or Lost, you have an idea where this is headed. The franchise needed a Terry Gilliam or a James Cameron. Or for god sakes, get Peter Jackson. He'd be bankable. Fuck it. Get me John Carpenter, or Edgar Wright, or fucking Dan O'Bannon before you bring me "J.J."... that motherfucker will reveal that Kirk killed Spock's mother, and McCoy is Spock's cousin. That's his idea of a "twist." I don't think he's going to be taking any interesting creative risks.
Oh well. At least it's not Joss Whedon.
Whatever happened to Nicholas Meyer anyway? They lose his phone number or something?