There is no desperate need to balance the budget, and the deficit is certainly not "killing" America....At the height of our debt-to-GDP ratio, after World War II, the federal debt was over 200% of our GDP, yet we survived.
Actually, the reason that worked out is that the US was the only industrialized nation that didn't have her infrastructure hosed by war or owed another nation (looking at you UK which did just finally pay off their WWII debt to the US just recently) and the only other nation that was comparable industrial capacity wise was the USSR which was in its Stalinist era which didn't need a real GDP to get things done (Need a public project done? Thats what millions of German Pows and Russian prisioners for! No need to pay anyone)
Anyways, the point being is that the reason the US could afford to have such big debts is that there was no other player in town when it came to currency. You might as well be trading in gold because the US dollar pretty much was the life blood of Marshall Plan postwar Germany and Japan.
Secondly, the US produced more oil than it consumed and exported more products than any other nation (actually back then the US was a major exporter in oil) so it could deal with such large debts.
The problem now is that we don't produce much in our factories, import massive amounts of energy from overseas, and our currency isn't valued as much on the international market.
I'm not predicting doom and gloom, but unless we actually do something about our foreign energy addiction, debt, and weakened dollar we will have problems economically. Big energy exporters like Russia and cheap goods manufacturers like China will be the winners of the 21st century.
I'm sure some of you are saying "But with a weakened dollar, it will make US goods more desirable on the foreign market!". Even if China completely floated the Yuan to a fair and free market value against the dollar their goods would still be cheaper. Secondly, America has burned a lot of its goodwill overseas and most foreigners are currently frowning on US good due to political reasons.
Again this of course leads to the issue with energy imports. If Chinese goods were more expensive and it pushed for more manufacturing in the US it would still be at weakened pace due to the fact that energy costs of production, transportation, and wage inflation due to the fact it now costs more to ship and have people drive to get to the stores will mean the economy will be up the creek with a paddle of a while.
Again, we'll live and it won't be a place of anarchy but until we do something about the strength of the dollar and energy costs then things will be rather troublesome for a while.
I'm not saying this is bad, and frankly I don't buy the "OMG Google will subvert Firefox" or whatever the conspiracy theory du jour is, but when 99% (or close to that) of your income comes from a single place, "I call the shots" comes across a little weak.
Were you registered as a non-profit organization like Mozilla? If so, it would be illegal for your dad to tell you what to do with the money he gave you. That said he just got the right to use the money he gave you as a big tax write off.
Sure Google could threaten to not donate, but according to fed tax laws, donations aren't like buying stock when it comes to non-profit. That was the whole point of why Mozilla was founded under a non-profit charter.
But otherwise, most online services still retain ownership of the virtual items. Which is why Sony can force Ebay to take down virtual gold auctions.
Lastly, for virtual items to have value they must be backed by something of worth. That could be actual property or ownership (like the shares on the stock exchange) or just plain old fashioned money.
As in... I print off a piece of paper with the phrase "this is worth a million dollars" on it and it gets stolen, I can't go to the judge and demand someone to be charged with a theft a million dollars.
Now if I paid, a million dollars for that piece of paper, then perhaps I would have a case. You would have to prove that you paid a million dollars for it and it was an agreed upon value through a contract and it would hopefully stick because that the piece of paper has been backed with money. (Keep in mind if I bought a million dollars of stocks and the next day the company folded then I couldn't sue for theft)
How do you know the person you use the CS gas on is actually a baddie? Remember, there are plenty of people they released from Gitmo after a while even though they returned to their home countries without prosecution or actually even going to trial.
The problem with abusing prisoners is that you create contempt and/or fabricated compliance. Hell... You could make the Pope confess to crucifying Christ if you tortured him long enough.
Personally, if I was faced with waterboarding or some other form of torture, I'd just give them the names of people I don't like and say "When you arrest these people they'll probaly lie and say something like they are innocent and I lied because I didn't like them because had a conflict of economic interests."
Chances are I'd be tortured anyways so eventually, I'll start listing off random people in hopes they would stop regardless of even if I had nothing to do with the crime and was completely innocent.
Its not that some of these people don't deserve to be tortured, it is just that the whole process is a dubious method of extracting information.
Heck... That sleep deprivation is even more so dubious. I couldn't remember where I left my car keys much less who I talked to on a certain date. Eventually, you'll just make something up and believe that it is true in hopes it will make it stop.
Not that interesting - the humans 5000 years ago were basically identical to now.
Actually, there is some debate with that because of societal changes through "intelligent selection".
Over the past 5,000 years humans have been killing off other humans based on predispositions. Hence, humans with certain qualities (usually criminals) have be systematically culled up until at least the 1800s when the death penalty was slowly replaced with imprisonment. Not to mention issues with religion and laws about sex possibly changing the genetic makeup of certain parts of humanity.
Although the change would be very unnoticeable, it is possible that genetic traits that affect psychology may have influenced evolution just a tad.
Dissent can erode power. Dissent can be crushed by force, and if the rest of the world either fears you or needs you (and in China's case, it's both), they aren't going to do much to stop you.
That's the thing. Dissent can be crushed by force but it never real works in the end. People will find a way to speak and all fascist states have fallen up till this point due to anger over oppression of freedom of speach.
The smart power mongers will find away so that dissent can be had, but changes nothing politically.
This can be as simple as making the dissenters just seem irrational by thew view of the majority of citizens or setting up a political system in which the dissenters appear to have an ability to affect the outcome of elections but in reality it does nothing.
That way, when someone complains that the nation is turning into a fascist state, the powers that be can say "Hey! Look at this guy over here complaining about how bad we are! He isn't being repressed isn't he? We aren't fascist! Never mind the fact that we don't hold free and fair elections!"
The point is... That just because you can complain about the government won't make it a great nation to live in, if they control every other aspect of your life. That way, the citizens could complain all they want, but you won't do anything to punish them until they actually step out of line and then make it seem like they are evil criminals.
That way the power of dissent will be minimized and the power that be won't have to worry about a revolt.
Yes, they may be incredulous, but if you hold your ground (if they're being unreasonable), treat them with respect, they will come around.
The fact that the parent was moderated down just shows me that the arrogance, contempt, and stupidity in corporate America is alive and well - especially in IT. I wouldn't say its not contempt but you get what you pay for. I once worked for a small software company who would push out emergency patches (even if the issue was minor) within 24 hours if you had the $10,000 package including paid support. No questions asked. Heck, we'll fly one of our reps out there to install the patch himself.
If you had a single license and no paid support... Well... We might have a general update next month with a public patch. We might not. Have a nice day.
Of course when you sell software as a service then thats how it works.
As a side note, one customers feature request created a completely separate build just for that customer which was annoying to the programmers but since they paid good money for it, they got what they asked for. Although... I remember the programmers eventually including the features for everyone else as a optional package just to avoid that so in the end even the single client customers benefited.
I am sick and tired of revisionists coming up with this tripe every time the nuclear bombings of Japan are discussed.
Actually, it wasn't modern people who thought this but actually the leaders in the US military who were actually fighting the war.
[quote]"In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives."[31][32][/quote] - General Dwight D. Eisenhower
[quote]"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan."[/quote] -Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
[quote]"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."[/quote] -Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.[35]
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, after interviewing hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, reported:
[quote]"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."[36][35][/quote]
[quote]General MacArthur has also contended that Japan would have surrendered before the bombings if the U.S. had notified Japan that it would accept a surrender that allowed Emperor Hirohito to keep his position as titular leader of Japan, a condition the U.S. did in fact allow after Japan surrendered. He suggested that the U.S. leadership knew this, through intercepts of encoded Japanese messages, but they refused to clarify Washington's willingness to accept this condition.[/quote]
So are you telling me that our war time leaders leading the actual war and not some armchair general sitting around today were actual revisionists? I'm not saying it was inherently immoral, but it was unneeded militarily to win the war according to the US military and they could have won with the Terms they had anyway with no more civilian or soliders loss of life if they had decided to go ahead with the single condition of the Emperor.
Triply so when you consider that as the dollar looses value, so does our debt, while our cheaper currency drives exports and growth.
You missed two major problems.
The first major problem is that the Yuan is pegged to the dollar so that most other nations buying products would still buy Chinese. The second major problem is that we still buy most of our oil in dollars from foreign sources. So the lower the value of dollar, the less oil we can purchase which means higher gas prices and then higher inflation because the major of our internal commerce relies on foreign oil for our transport capabilities.
So unless we find an alternative to foreign oil, this is bad news.
Stalin bears zero credit for "holding Russia together" during the Great Patriotic War (WW2). Stalin's paranoid purges of the Red Army prior to the war weakened his forces to the point that Finland was able to hold them off. Stalin's attempts at military "leadership" (pushing offenses against the advice of Zhukov) all ended in disaster. Stalin's sole saving grace over Hitler is that he eventually realized this and allowed his military men to conduct the war.
There is some debate to this. Stalin did royally screw things up, but it is said that he didn't as much win the war as much as Hitler lost it.
That said, it was thought that the German forces actually survived the 41 winter counter attack because of Hitler incessant interference and demands. Of course that said, it was this that it was this interference that actually prevented Guderian from reaching Moscow in a timely matter in the first place, and that Hitler thought he could repeat the same process during the battle of Stalingrad.
That said... Militarily Stalin wasn't that great, but political he did hold things together with fear that would have caused any western nation facing the same situation to fold up and surrender.
You do know that's a reason for them not to attack us, right? I mean, it's not like we'd honor their treasury bonds if they declared war on us.
So? China has plenty of Euro reserves and the Chinese banks have been quietly shifting everything over to non-US dollars (at the same time very discreetly because of their US investments) and if push came to shove, China would have a large in place R&D and manufacturing base, plenty of Euros and of course plenty of worthless US dollars.
While we would have nothing but worthless US dollars, 9 trillion dollars of US debt, no comparable industrial infrastructure, and a nation full of marketers, lawyers, and middle management.
You expect all those office workers to start working in the factories tomorrow? Canceling the US debt would hurt us much far more than it would hurt the Chinese.
Look people, as long as Facebook, MySpace, et. al. do not go to extraordinary lengths to screen applicants
The problem is when government gets involved with internet sites, the government forgot that companies have the option to move overseas. There is no need for a brick and mortar locations to be in one nation or another. The reason Myspace and Facebook reside in the US now was because their creators lived in the US and found it convenient to create and maintain said sites in the US.
However, if laws made it so difficult to operate a site in the US because every state would have its way with all these regulations that such sites might just pick up and leave (taking their income and jobs with them) to other countries more favorable to their presence.
In all seriousness, it wouldn't be necessarily something you would have to do to get a keyboard/mouse interface with the brain. The brain has been shown to be very adaptable and you could probaly keep your own appendages and still have the ability to interface with the computer.
Of course, I'd donate a kidney (or two) to be the first to have this done.
Let's face it - user fees would skyrocket if there was no advertising. I'd rather watch advertisements that cater to my interests, rather than tampon commercials!
I'd pay fees to watch good material and I do mostly with Anime since the proliferation of whole series on box set DVDs.
The problem is... where totalitarian dictatorships went wrong in the past, is that they try and shut people up. That causes trouble. There's really no need to to quieten and remove dissidents. No-one really cares.
Actually, during the cultural revolution in China this technique was used for a bit. Basically, they let people to openly criticize the government and even encouraged it. The went around and said "See! We are democratic! We let people complain about the government!"
Later, they thought it was a bad idea and used all the open criticism to determine who was loyal or not and when back to the old way of not allowing criticism at all.
I believe if used correctly, allowing dissent could be used to prove legitimacy of a dictatorship or plutocracy. The powers that be could say "Hey! Look at this guy who complains about us! That means we are a democracy! A dictatorship would never allow someone to complain. Never mind the fact we don't have free and fair elections because we choose the candidates for the people!"
Eliminate all menial labor without drastically increasing the quality of education would result in massive unemployment and unrest, I fear. Yes, people would still be having trouble with their DSL, but as a result of the riots.
I've debated this in my own head for a while because even though I have a job that maybe the mid-range of jobs that will get replaced by automation, it will eventually.
The key here is economic forces and the cost of living and entertainment costs. In America most of the jobs have gone service industry anyways since we have shipped all our manufacturing jobs overseas. More automation just means more of that.
The key to the question about the riots in such a transition period is that if a person can raise a family with the income of one who works at Wal Mart. Of course, if all products and energy costs were at "Wal Mart" prices then it wouldn't be a problem. Unlike the labor strikes on the 19th and 20th centuries people have great means to entertaining themselves with foot ball on there 50" plasma or the latest Halo on Xbox360.
I mean the Roman empire didn't have riots because people were unemployed and had nothing to do except eat bread and watch stuff at the Colosseum. The had riots once the bread ran out, the shows stopped, and the barbarians invaded because the Roman Emperor couldn't afford an army anymore.
The main goal of robotics is to solve all three or make it cheap enough that it is a moot point that you work at Walmart but you can still afford your 50" tv.
Of course eventually AI might get good enough to replace the people who design the TV and work at Walmart, but at that point if there are riots the robots will probaly be able to deal with a scenario by force, but hopefully someone would have the brains to program the AI in charge of manufacturing and distribution of goods to give it away for free and support humanity rather than euthanise it.
Small world. Personally I sold Pia my old car for $200 bucks a few years ago and dated a friend of a friend of hers. She moved out to California last I heard, doing modeling.
But more to on topic, Finland stayed independent by making a deal with the Soviets to kick the Germans out after being able to hold the Soviets off for a while during 1944. So, allies turned enemies and Stalin didn't really seem that interested in infiltrating Finland after the war.
Not with an attitude like that. You're not entitled to a high-paying job, you have to compete for it. The way to compete is to stay educated. Provide more value than "someone working for a third of what you do now".
Actually, I suspect in 10 to 20 years my job will be replaced by robots leaving me and the kid from Africa out of work.
But seriously, people think that being educated and working hard gets you an automatic good job that you can keep, but it is really about intelligent applied effort. If your job can be automated, then you'll be out of work fairly shortly.
The trick is to be the ones doing the automation. Doesn't matter if you live in the US, China, or Africa for that. Just focus on a job that is about creating automation in IT.
Of course once you learn how to automate those who make the automation, then you won't need humans anymore for IT beyond initial infrastructure setup. We aren't there yet but we are getting close.
Optical media always has and always will suck. Solid state is the only reasonable media for a handheld device.
Why is this modded flamebait? Its true. If Sony really had the business brains, they would allow down loadable content to SSD memory sticks as most people do with the ripped movies and homebrew apps.
Heck, if they really had the balls they allow a legitimate method for PSP users to actually rip their games to SSD, but they seem to be so against that. Actually, people already do that for "backups" and other illegitimate uses, but I don't see why you couldn't have this done official with the proper checks.
To be fair, I'm disappointed with the gimmicky download station system Nintendo has. The potential is there for downloading demos and full games to flash cartridge that would fit in the GBA slot, but you can't just use your home wifi without using 3rd party utilities and finding the image of the game/demo which is not all that legal but I digress.
The PSP has the potential for a great SSD system. You can probaly buy a hefty memory stick that you could fit several games on which not only save you from having to lug several mini-cds around (and worry about getting scratched) but you save battery power as well.
Do we really think open market operations won't solve the issue?
The problem is that telecommunications in an inherit monopoly with no free market involved.
The only true free market solution would be to allow a complete free market in which eventually all the telecommunications would merge due to market pressure resulting in one big monopoly which at that point would dictate whatever they felt like as the service and price thus ending the free market.
So the paradox is that we can't reduce regulation as it is now without destroying the free market.
The only way we could get a sustained free market is actually use temporary government regulation to break up the current monopolies and pass a permanent law that says no telco company can ever merge with another one and force line providers out of the content providing business.
Yes... That sounds like the total opposite of a free market, but your going to have to break the bone to set it right to eventually get back to the 90s style of internet ISPs in which the phone company owned the line but didn't provide the service and the free market let ISPs flourish.
I remember a time in which prices of dial up dropped and speeds improved because there was competition between mom and pop 56K ISPs. Now what do we have... Verizon, ATT, and Comcast and chances are you may only have one of them in your area if you want broad band.
If the govenrment came in a said, "OK, you can own the lines but you can't sell internet service" and then forced the telcoms to lease their lines to a slew of competitors we would see a compitition.
I would go as far as to say we need another baby bell break up. Heck.... It was the only way to real spur a free market with Ma Bell.
As they say their simple hilltop to hilltop test failed because of weather conditions, whats going to happen when they do put 'scopes at the lagrange points?
Huh? The logical thing do to would be have the laser communicators in orbit, and the communication from ground to the laser satellites would be via the conventional means. If its cloudy in your town, then the satellite can talk to another town which isn't cloudy and you can use fiber to talk the rest of the way.
Me and my party literally walked through without anyone checking anything at any time. They didn't even LOOK at our passports. I wanted them to stamp mine so I would have the Italy stamp, but the man just waved us on past.
Why not?
When has airport security ever stopped a real threat?
All the 9/11 terrorists had valid ID and passed all criteria that raised no flags. Even the "do not fly list" would not have stopped them. Its just a waste of time and better methods of security are needed other than the current American system.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no desperate need to balance the budget, and the deficit is certainly not "killing" America....At the height of our debt-to-GDP ratio, after World War II, the federal debt was over 200% of our GDP, yet we survived.
Actually, the reason that worked out is that the US was the only industrialized nation that didn't have her infrastructure hosed by war or owed another nation (looking at you UK which did just finally pay off their WWII debt to the US just recently) and the only other nation that was comparable industrial capacity wise was the USSR which was in its Stalinist era which didn't need a real GDP to get things done (Need a public project done? Thats what millions of German Pows and Russian prisioners for! No need to pay anyone)
Anyways, the point being is that the reason the US could afford to have such big debts is that there was no other player in town when it came to currency. You might as well be trading in gold because the US dollar pretty much was the life blood of Marshall Plan postwar Germany and Japan.
Secondly, the US produced more oil than it consumed and exported more products than any other nation (actually back then the US was a major exporter in oil) so it could deal with such large debts.
The problem now is that we don't produce much in our factories, import massive amounts of energy from overseas, and our currency isn't valued as much on the international market.
I'm not predicting doom and gloom, but unless we actually do something about our foreign energy addiction, debt, and weakened dollar we will have problems economically. Big energy exporters like Russia and cheap goods manufacturers like China will be the winners of the 21st century.
I'm sure some of you are saying "But with a weakened dollar, it will make US goods more desirable on the foreign market!". Even if China completely floated the Yuan to a fair and free market value against the dollar their goods would still be cheaper. Secondly, America has burned a lot of its goodwill overseas and most foreigners are currently frowning on US good due to political reasons.
Again this of course leads to the issue with energy imports. If Chinese goods were more expensive and it pushed for more manufacturing in the US it would still be at weakened pace due to the fact that energy costs of production, transportation, and wage inflation due to the fact it now costs more to ship and have people drive to get to the stores will mean the economy will be up the creek with a paddle of a while.
Again, we'll live and it won't be a place of anarchy but until we do something about the strength of the dollar and energy costs then things will be rather troublesome for a while.
I'm not saying this is bad, and frankly I don't buy the "OMG Google will subvert Firefox" or whatever the conspiracy theory du jour is, but when 99% (or close to that) of your income comes from a single place, "I call the shots" comes across a little weak.
Were you registered as a non-profit organization like Mozilla? If so, it would be illegal for your dad to tell you what to do with the money he gave you. That said he just got the right to use the money he gave you as a big tax write off.
Sure Google could threaten to not donate, but according to fed tax laws, donations aren't like buying stock when it comes to non-profit. That was the whole point of why Mozilla was founded under a non-profit charter.
Isn't it a bit like saying "The US Mint can print as many bills as they like!" ?
Under the current system that is pretty much true.
But otherwise, most online services still retain ownership of the virtual items. Which is why Sony can force Ebay to take down virtual gold auctions.
Lastly, for virtual items to have value they must be backed by something of worth. That could be actual property or ownership (like the shares on the stock exchange) or just plain old fashioned money.
As in... I print off a piece of paper with the phrase "this is worth a million dollars" on it and it gets stolen, I can't go to the judge and demand someone to be charged with a theft a million dollars.
Now if I paid, a million dollars for that piece of paper, then perhaps I would have a case. You would have to prove that you paid a million dollars for it and it was an agreed upon value through a contract and it would hopefully stick because that the piece of paper has been backed with money. (Keep in mind if I bought a million dollars of stocks and the next day the company folded then I couldn't sue for theft)
(IANAL and all that)
How do you know the person you use the CS gas on is actually a baddie?
Remember, there are plenty of people they released from Gitmo after a while even though they returned to their home countries without prosecution or actually even going to trial.
The problem with abusing prisoners is that you create contempt and/or fabricated compliance. Hell... You could make the Pope confess to crucifying Christ if you tortured him long enough.
Personally, if I was faced with waterboarding or some other form of torture, I'd just give them the names of people I don't like and say "When you arrest these people they'll probaly lie and say something like they are innocent and I lied because I didn't like them because had a conflict of economic interests."
Chances are I'd be tortured anyways so eventually, I'll start listing off random people in hopes they would stop regardless of even if I had nothing to do with the crime and was completely innocent.
Its not that some of these people don't deserve to be tortured, it is just that the whole process is a dubious method of extracting information.
Heck... That sleep deprivation is even more so dubious. I couldn't remember where I left my car keys much less who I talked to on a certain date. Eventually, you'll just make something up and believe that it is true in hopes it will make it stop.
Not that interesting - the humans 5000 years ago were basically identical to now.
Actually, there is some debate with that because of societal changes through "intelligent selection".
Over the past 5,000 years humans have been killing off other humans based on predispositions. Hence, humans with certain qualities (usually criminals) have be systematically culled up until at least the 1800s when the death penalty was slowly replaced with imprisonment. Not to mention issues with religion and laws about sex possibly changing the genetic makeup of certain parts of humanity.
Although the change would be very unnoticeable, it is possible that genetic traits that affect psychology may have influenced evolution just a tad.
Dissent can erode power. Dissent can be crushed by force, and if the rest of the world either fears you or needs you (and in China's case, it's both), they aren't going to do much to stop you.
That's the thing. Dissent can be crushed by force but it never real works in the end. People will find a way to speak and all fascist states have fallen up till this point due to anger over oppression of freedom of speach.
The smart power mongers will find away so that dissent can be had, but changes nothing politically.
This can be as simple as making the dissenters just seem irrational by thew view of the majority of citizens or setting up a political system in which the dissenters appear to have an ability to affect the outcome of elections but in reality it does nothing.
That way, when someone complains that the nation is turning into a fascist state, the powers that be can say "Hey! Look at this guy over here complaining about how bad we are! He isn't being repressed isn't he? We aren't fascist! Never mind the fact that we don't hold free and fair elections!"
The point is... That just because you can complain about the government won't make it a great nation to live in, if they control every other aspect of your life. That way, the citizens could complain all they want, but you won't do anything to punish them until they actually step out of line and then make it seem like they are evil criminals.
That way the power of dissent will be minimized and the power that be won't have to worry about a revolt.
The fact that the parent was moderated down just shows me that the arrogance, contempt, and stupidity in corporate America is alive and well - especially in IT. I wouldn't say its not contempt but you get what you pay for. I once worked for a small software company who would push out emergency patches (even if the issue was minor) within 24 hours if you had the $10,000 package including paid support. No questions asked. Heck, we'll fly one of our reps out there to install the patch himself.
If you had a single license and no paid support... Well... We might have a general update next month with a public patch. We might not. Have a nice day.
Of course when you sell software as a service then thats how it works.
As a side note, one customers feature request created a completely separate build just for that customer which was annoying to the programmers but since they paid good money for it, they got what they asked for. Although... I remember the programmers eventually including the features for everyone else as a optional package just to avoid that so in the end even the single client customers benefited.
I am sick and tired of revisionists coming up with this tripe every time the nuclear bombings of Japan are discussed.
Actually, it wasn't modern people who thought this but actually the leaders in the US military who were actually fighting the war.
[quote]"In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives."[31][32][/quote] - General Dwight D. Eisenhower
[quote]"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan."[/quote] -Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
[quote]"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."[/quote] -Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.[35]
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, after interviewing hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, reported:
[quote]"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."[36][35][/quote]
From the Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
[quote]General MacArthur has also contended that Japan would have surrendered before the bombings if the U.S. had notified Japan that it would accept a surrender that allowed Emperor Hirohito to keep his position as titular leader of Japan, a condition the U.S. did in fact allow after Japan surrendered. He suggested that the U.S. leadership knew this, through intercepts of encoded Japanese messages, but they refused to clarify Washington's willingness to accept this condition.[/quote]
So are you telling me that our war time leaders leading the actual war and not some armchair general sitting around today were actual revisionists? I'm not saying it was inherently immoral, but it was unneeded militarily to win the war according to the US military and they could have won with the Terms they had anyway with no more civilian or soliders loss of life if they had decided to go ahead with the single condition of the Emperor.
Triply so when you consider that as the dollar looses value, so does our debt, while our cheaper currency drives exports and growth.
You missed two major problems.
The first major problem is that the Yuan is pegged to the dollar so that most other nations buying products would still buy Chinese.
The second major problem is that we still buy most of our oil in dollars from foreign sources. So the lower the value of dollar, the less oil we can purchase which means higher gas prices and then higher inflation because the major of our internal commerce relies on foreign oil for our transport capabilities.
So unless we find an alternative to foreign oil, this is bad news.
Stalin bears zero credit for "holding Russia together" during the Great Patriotic War (WW2). Stalin's paranoid purges of the Red Army prior to the war weakened his forces to the point that Finland was able to hold them off. Stalin's attempts at military "leadership" (pushing offenses against the advice of Zhukov) all ended in disaster. Stalin's sole saving grace over Hitler is that he eventually realized this and allowed his military men to conduct the war.
There is some debate to this. Stalin did royally screw things up, but it is said that he didn't as much win the war as much as Hitler lost it.
That said, it was thought that the German forces actually survived the 41 winter counter attack because of Hitler incessant interference and demands. Of course that said, it was this that it was this interference that actually prevented Guderian from reaching Moscow in a timely matter in the first place, and that Hitler thought he could repeat the same process during the battle of Stalingrad.
That said... Militarily Stalin wasn't that great, but political he did hold things together with fear that would have caused any western nation facing the same situation to fold up and surrender.
You do know that's a reason for them not to attack us, right? I mean, it's not like we'd honor their treasury bonds if they declared war on us.
So? China has plenty of Euro reserves and the Chinese banks have been quietly shifting everything over to non-US dollars (at the same time very discreetly because of their US investments) and if push came to shove, China would have a large in place R&D and manufacturing base, plenty of Euros and of course plenty of worthless US dollars.
While we would have nothing but worthless US dollars, 9 trillion dollars of US debt, no comparable industrial infrastructure, and a nation full of marketers, lawyers, and middle management.
You expect all those office workers to start working in the factories tomorrow? Canceling the US debt would hurt us much far more than it would hurt the Chinese.
Look people, as long as Facebook, MySpace, et. al. do not go to extraordinary lengths to screen applicants
The problem is when government gets involved with internet sites, the government forgot that companies have the option to move overseas. There is no need for a brick and mortar locations to be in one nation or another. The reason Myspace and Facebook reside in the US now was because their creators lived in the US and found it convenient to create and maintain said sites in the US.
However, if laws made it so difficult to operate a site in the US because every state would have its way with all these regulations that such sites might just pick up and leave (taking their income and jobs with them) to other countries more favorable to their presence.
In all seriousness, it wouldn't be necessarily something you would have to do to get a keyboard/mouse interface with the brain. The brain has been shown to be very adaptable and you could probaly keep your own appendages and still have the ability to interface with the computer.
Of course, I'd donate a kidney (or two) to be the first to have this done.
Let's face it - user fees would skyrocket if there was no advertising. I'd rather watch advertisements that cater to my interests, rather than tampon commercials!
I'd pay fees to watch good material and I do mostly with Anime since the proliferation of whole series on box set DVDs.
The problem is... where totalitarian dictatorships went wrong in the past, is that they try and shut people up. That causes trouble. There's really no need to to quieten and remove dissidents. No-one really cares.
Actually, during the cultural revolution in China this technique was used for a bit. Basically, they let people to openly criticize the government and even encouraged it. The went around and said "See! We are democratic! We let people complain about the government!"
Later, they thought it was a bad idea and used all the open criticism to determine who was loyal or not and when back to the old way of not allowing criticism at all.
I believe if used correctly, allowing dissent could be used to prove legitimacy of a dictatorship or plutocracy. The powers that be could say "Hey! Look at this guy who complains about us! That means we are a democracy! A dictatorship would never allow someone to complain. Never mind the fact we don't have free and fair elections because we choose the candidates for the people!"
Neither are paper ballots, depending on who's counting them.
Which is harder?
A.) Burning 50,000 ballots
or
B.) Running an SQL query to change a field
Eliminate all menial labor without drastically increasing the quality of education would result in massive unemployment and unrest, I fear. Yes, people would still be having trouble with their DSL, but as a result of the riots.
I've debated this in my own head for a while because even though I have a job that maybe the mid-range of jobs that will get replaced by automation, it will eventually.
The key here is economic forces and the cost of living and entertainment costs. In America most of the jobs have gone service industry anyways since we have shipped all our manufacturing jobs overseas. More automation just means more of that.
The key to the question about the riots in such a transition period is that if a person can raise a family with the income of one who works at Wal Mart. Of course, if all products and energy costs were at "Wal Mart" prices then it wouldn't be a problem. Unlike the labor strikes on the 19th and 20th centuries people have great means to entertaining themselves with foot ball on there 50" plasma or the latest Halo on Xbox360.
I mean the Roman empire didn't have riots because people were unemployed and had nothing to do except eat bread and watch stuff at the Colosseum. The had riots once the bread ran out, the shows stopped, and the barbarians invaded because the Roman Emperor couldn't afford an army anymore.
The main goal of robotics is to solve all three or make it cheap enough that it is a moot point that you work at Walmart but you can still afford your 50" tv.
Of course eventually AI might get good enough to replace the people who design the TV and work at Walmart, but at that point if there are riots the robots will probaly be able to deal with a scenario by force, but hopefully someone would have the brains to program the AI in charge of manufacturing and distribution of goods to give it away for free and support humanity rather than euthanise it.
Who are you and what did you do with the real FCC?
(I Love Pia Kaamos)
Small world. Personally I sold Pia my old car for $200 bucks a few years ago and dated a friend of a friend of hers.
She moved out to California last I heard, doing modeling.
But more to on topic, Finland stayed independent by making a deal with the Soviets to kick the Germans out after being able to hold the Soviets off for a while during 1944. So, allies turned enemies and Stalin didn't really seem that interested in infiltrating Finland after the war.
Not with an attitude like that. You're not entitled to a high-paying job, you have to compete for it. The way to compete is to stay educated. Provide more value than "someone working for a third of what you do now".
Actually, I suspect in 10 to 20 years my job will be replaced by robots leaving me and the kid from Africa out of work.
But seriously, people think that being educated and working hard gets you an automatic good job that you can keep, but it is really about intelligent applied effort. If your job can be automated, then you'll be out of work fairly shortly.
The trick is to be the ones doing the automation. Doesn't matter if you live in the US, China, or Africa for that. Just focus on a job that is about creating automation in IT.
Of course once you learn how to automate those who make the automation, then you won't need humans anymore for IT beyond initial infrastructure setup. We aren't there yet but we are getting close.
In Space, no one can hear you scream Habeus Corpus. :)
I can only imagine the expression on the face of the government agent who tries to water board someone for the first time.
Optical media always has and always will suck. Solid state is the only reasonable media for a handheld device.
Why is this modded flamebait? Its true. If Sony really had the business brains, they would allow down loadable content to SSD memory sticks as most people do with the ripped movies and homebrew apps.
Heck, if they really had the balls they allow a legitimate method for PSP users to actually rip their games to SSD, but they seem to be so against that. Actually, people already do that for "backups" and other illegitimate uses, but I don't see why you couldn't have this done official with the proper checks.
To be fair, I'm disappointed with the gimmicky download station system Nintendo has. The potential is there for downloading demos and full games to flash cartridge that would fit in the GBA slot, but you can't just use your home wifi without using 3rd party utilities and finding the image of the game/demo which is not all that legal but I digress.
The PSP has the potential for a great SSD system. You can probaly buy a hefty memory stick that you could fit several games on which not only save you from having to lug several mini-cds around (and worry about getting scratched) but you save battery power as well.
Do we really think open market operations won't solve the issue?
The problem is that telecommunications in an inherit monopoly with no free market involved.
The only true free market solution would be to allow a complete free market in which eventually all the telecommunications would merge due to market pressure resulting in one big monopoly which at that point would dictate whatever they felt like as the service and price thus ending the free market.
So the paradox is that we can't reduce regulation as it is now without destroying the free market.
The only way we could get a sustained free market is actually use temporary government regulation to break up the current monopolies and pass a permanent law that says no telco company can ever merge with another one and force line providers out of the content providing business.
Yes... That sounds like the total opposite of a free market, but your going to have to break the bone to set it right to eventually get back to the 90s style of internet ISPs in which the phone company owned the line but didn't provide the service and the free market let ISPs flourish.
I remember a time in which prices of dial up dropped and speeds improved because there was competition between mom and pop 56K ISPs. Now what do we have... Verizon, ATT, and Comcast and chances are you may only have one of them in your area if you want broad band.
If the govenrment came in a said, "OK, you can own the lines but you can't sell internet service" and then forced the telcoms to lease their lines to a slew of competitors we would see a compitition.
I would go as far as to say we need another baby bell break up. Heck.... It was the only way to real spur a free market with Ma Bell.
As they say their simple hilltop to hilltop test failed because of weather conditions, whats going to happen when they do put 'scopes at the lagrange points?
Huh? The logical thing do to would be have the laser communicators in orbit, and the communication from ground to the laser satellites would be via the conventional means. If its cloudy in your town, then the satellite can talk to another town which isn't cloudy and you can use fiber to talk the rest of the way.
Me and my party literally walked through without anyone checking anything at any time. They didn't even LOOK at our passports. I wanted them to stamp mine so I would have the Italy stamp, but the man just waved us on past.
Why not?
When has airport security ever stopped a real threat?
All the 9/11 terrorists had valid ID and passed all criteria that raised no flags. Even the "do not fly list" would not have stopped them. Its just a waste of time and better methods of security are needed other than the current American system.