There is also the idea that if you have a state (or municipality) sanctioned public transportation system, isn't in the state (or municipalitity) interest to make sure it is a monopoly? This is the sort of thing that destroys public transit systems.
It has something to do with competition, but only on the peripheral edges. If you have a public transit system with some sort of competition, what generally happens is the "better" routes - those that produce the most riders and revenue - get sucked away by the competition. This leaves the public transit system forced to either cut services or increase fares. And it just keeps happening until you have a very poor (in all senses) public transit system.
This is partly what happened in the US. Sure the "unlicensed" service can provide better and cheaper rides for some people. But they degrade the entire public transit system.
will be that building any creative work in digital form better be a charitable act. Once it is in digital form, you can't control it either through contracts or law. It is fair game for being "shared" out the wazoo.
I'd say that OCLC doesn't really stand much of a chance in this. We have grown up with the idea that if it isn't nailed down, it is going to be shared. Why do you think they might object to assisting in creating a competitor to themselves?
It is like being asked to train your replacement, only your replacement only has to work half days. Cheaper for the company - part time employee - and free training program for someone that just walks in off the street. Sounds like a real plan and even better than outsourcing.
There are human cultures which never had any sort of property rights at all. Everything was either communal or owned by "Mother Earth". Private ownership wasn't ever considered.
Sounds pretty good, right? Until you realize that none of these cultures developed much past the writing stage and some not even that far. They never produced anything of any lasting importance either culturally or intellectually. Sure, the people living in these societies might have been pretty happy, until a disease came and wiped them out or a drought starved them to death. Pretty primitive way of life.
Without "ownership" and "property rights" that is about all a culture get to.
Unfortunately, the other side of that is whoever has the biggest distribution channel wins. You remove all barriers to distribution of something - no more licensing, royalties, patents, trademarks and copyrights - and now you have the big players out-distributing the small guys.
Think what happens when a song becomes "popular" and there are no barriers to distribution. Sony (or WalMart) just produces a CD. Maybe it is the original vocal talent, maybe not. Who cares? They win, the originator becomes a nobody.
Same thing with books. If WalMart can sell the book for $5 because it is printed in China, why would anyone even be able to find the "original" from the original author? So you think the author just makes a deal with WalMart... except what would be the motivation to give the author anything at all?
There are problems today with IP law, but throwing it away isn't the answer, unless you really love WalMart and Sony.
That plan ensures that nobody other tham large corporations will ever receive a patent again.
The "garage inventor" would be quickly displaced by a company that could exploit the invention. All they have to do is wait. Licensing a patent would be a thing of the past.
If the objective is to move all sources of revenue to major companies, well, I think you have hit on a real winner.
Back in the 1930's when construction was done by strong backs and no skills, that would have worked. And it did. Today, bridges are built by specialists with training. You want to drive on a bridge that was welded with by someone that never used one before? No? Neither does anyone else. The age of unskilled strong backs has ended. And we are discovering just how that relates to the "knowledge economy" now.
Face it, if everyone goes to college to learn how to be a "knowledge worker", who exactly will be working skilled construction jobs? Short answer is, nobody. And the harder getting a college education is pushed, the less chance we have of digging out of this hole.
Domestic construction equipement? Ha. Most of those products are made overseas now even through they have American manufacturer labels on them. It is cheaper to build a bulldozer in China and ship it to the US than to pay union scale wages plus deal with OSHA and environmental regulations. Unless we remove the US from WTO, we are stuck with making everything elsewhere - tariffs aren't legal anymore you understand. And any open-bid process would have to question why the government should spend 2x the money for "domestic made" equipment. Survival of the nation? Na, not a good enough reason.
Sure, I would like to see work camps replace welfare. If you are able-bodied you get nothing unless you are in a work camp doing something. Picking up trash, if nothing else. Cleaning up environmentally sensitive areas. Helping to build shelters for the homeless, whether they want them or not. But I think you would hear cries of "slavery" so much that the idea has no chance.
The problem isn't the relatively few smart people that might use such substances responsibly. The problem is the incredibly large number of people that couldn't understand they are doing something silly adding water to concentrated acid. This latter group vastly outnumbers the former, so much so that giving people free access to stuff would result in... well, I would imagine a lot of damage.
See, we don't let kindergardners play in the kitchen. After the age of five or so people (mostly) understand things like knives are sharp, the range is hot, and you don't want to sit in the refrigerator. So the kitchen is pretty safe.
If your average apartment-dweller knew they had access to powerful acids, strong bases and such they might want to play around. You know, "Hey Charlie, watch THIS!!!" So we have relatively ineffectual regulations that keep Charlie's friend away from finding out how easy it is to get this stuff. This sounds like a good plan to me.
Bomb making? You can still get everything you need. Obviously, because people are still making bombs. It just takes a bit more motivation and perseverence.
There can be no regulation - regulation would prevent you from putting whatever you want into your body. These regulation would also prevent you from putting whatever you want into other people's bodies, with or without their consent. Obviously, regulation is not going to work.
Another problem is addictive personalities are going to be addicted. Period. Once there is an available supply the addiction kicks in. Societal norms, "morals" and fear of being ostracized prevents all of the addictive personalities from obtaining their first hit today. Erase that and we will likely have vastly larger numbers of people that are going to be serious, full-time drug users with no possibility of contributing to society.
Absent regulation, where exactly do we go? Freely distribute drugs to drive the prices down? Rely on genetics to sort out the non-productive drug users in a few generations? I don't think so. None of these solutions really work very well as shown by the pretty much free reign drugs have had since the 1950s in the US.
Sure it would be nice if such non-compete agreements could not be implemented. From what I have seen in the past it was unusual that an employer would get themselves into this situation in the first place - if a possible non-compete problem existed they just didn't bother with that applicant.
Once you start opening the door to such things, it is very difficult to just sue the company. What the non-complete may be relevent for may be something that is buried deep in the processes of the company and not at all apparent in the resulting product. And besides, that just opens the door to exploratory lawsuits because the person that got hired might be disclosing information they have no right to disclose.
This isn't just "personal knowledge" either. It is often "organization knowledge" that you have to know about in order to do your job at Company A. Upon going to Company B it is clear that if they only knew what your former employer did, they would get more sales, make products faster and cheaper, whatever.
Where some co-workers got themselves into trouble was (a) not disclosing there was a non-complete agreement in the first place and (b) trying to find out how much this knowledge might be worth to their new employer. As in "I might be able to offer some advice on how to do this better for $5000." Yes, I heard about that offer once. It was a while ago and resulted in immediate (same hour) termination of the employee.
They think all customers are criminals because a shocking number of them are in fact criminals. Most retail stores are experiencing losses up to 10% because of shoplifting, product defacement and the like.
So why would you not expect them to treat you like a criminal? When 1 in 10 people going through the store is stealing something or trying to steal something?
Sorry, but there isn't enough money in it for the level of oversight that you would like. That level of oversight would require either taxing the heck out of prostitution or subsidising the regulators from all taxpayers. Neither one is really going to fly.
There is another basic problem. If prostitution were an entprenural activity, that woudl be one thing. The problem is that it generally isn't. The "boss" almost always is explotative and turns it into a demeaning, eploitative job.
I don't know how to fix that. If you could get the explotation out of it, it could be an honorable profession fulfilling a real need. But the way it is conducted in the US today, it isn't and likely never can be.
Any major revision to the electrical grid is going to require reworking existing transmission lines. And there is the problem. Unless we can run transmission lines through areas that are unpopulated and not environmentally sensitive, the project is doomed if the leaders are paying any attention at all to environmentalists. And we need to ignore the hypocondriacs as well.
You see, today we have the forces of technology and growth confounded by ill-informed environmentalism and hypocondria. You can't build a power line anywhere near people because "everyone knows" these things cause cancer, mental retardation, impotence and a variety of other maladies. It might disturb the habitat of some lizard if we build it.
Obama has sent out messages during the campaign that he is going to respect these groups far more than any previous administration. There will be no growth, progress or anything else if he does this. He wants to turn off the coal-fired power plants, possibly without an alternative in place. Sure, it might make the environment better. But it will certainly transform the face of America overnight.
Most of the time "the peace" is defined by terms like "quiet enjoyment". Under these standards, public cursing is a violation of "the peace" and police will enforce that law.
Like it or not, poople a long time ago decided they did not like the idea of offensive people and did something about it.
The alternative leans far more towards "an armed society is a polite society" where if you are offensive you may be called upon to defend you offensiveness with your life.
Problem is, television is a great socializing force. It shows people in lots of situations interacting with others. There is a strong presumption, especially of the young, that this makes television shows an "authority". Whatever they see, they are going to be influenced to believe is acceptable.
A parent can try. However as soon as it becomes apparent that the parent (of the previous generation) isn't quite up on things with the current youth generation television showing members of the youth generation as well as "role models" for the youth generation, they are going to figure out that all this nonsense about cuss words, politeness and courtesy is just leftovers from their parents' generation. Or their grandparents' generation.
Let's see... Iraq was under sanctions for over 10 years and the sanctions where leaking badly. Because not everone believed in them or the UN's authority to impose them. Similarly, the UN issued hollow resolution after resolution condemming what was happening in Iraq until it was clear that the UN wasn't going to do anything except issue condemnations.
The entry into Iraq by the US was after years upon years of violations of various agreements. Finally, Iraq ejected the arms inspectors, sending a clear message that they were not going to be showing the UN what else they were doing. All the while the "Oil for Food" program was funnelling millions of dollars into the top leadership in Iraq and not the civilians as was intended. What was possible with all that money, aside from building ornate palaces? Who knows. Certainly there was enough money to buy virtually anything, including banned weapons.
As for isolationism, today we have closed most of the factories in the US because of excessive labor costs. Excessive when compared with third-world countries. The differential is so great that it is cheaper to make stuff halfway around the world and ship it here than it is to make it here. Deciding that we no longer wanted to do that would (a) raise prices on everything sold in the US overnight and (b) violate many international agreements about "open trade" and such. Nope, we're unlikely to do any of that.
The problem with Arizona is they may not have results until later on Wednesday. By then, the TV News folks will have announced the unofficial winner. That will probably take place by 10:00 PM Arizona time.
This pretty much means that voting in Arizona is pointless. The results aren't going to be of much use.
Oh wait, what if the results from Arizona change the entire election? Sure, do you really believe that if Obama is the winner before Arizona's results are counted that there could possibly be a change allowed to occur? I doubt it. We run "media elections" where the winner is projected from exit polls. The real results from machines like Arizona has take too long to get and tablulate. So they don't count anymore.
I keep hearing stuff like this. It must be nice to live in a world where you can dictate the platform to your customers. You say you are supplying their mission-critical application for Linux and they just (a) get another machine, (b) convert all their other stuff to Linux, or (c) tell theor other vendors to convert everything over to Linux.
Us, we get to work in a different (perhaps more familiar) world. We do not supply the application that completely rules how people do their jobs. Instead, it is a much smaller application that they just use in conjunction with 10-20 other applications. Now things being as they are, these other applications require Windows.
Sure, it would be great fun to be able to dictate to customers what platform they should run our applications on. But they are the ones with the money and they get to choose. If our stuff doesn't work they way they want it to, they will choose a different vendor that does in fact supply Windows applications.
And no, I haven't seen much in the way of lock in, other than customers needing things to work together. I have seen lots of development organizations suffering greatly from trying to follow Microsoft's bleeding edge. If you have tried to follow COM, ATL, DCOM, DCOM+,.Net (3.5 generations of it) and whatever else is coming along you have probably been suffering greatly. If every new language, framework or tool is something you have to try out in a product you have been suffering. There is another way to get along with Microsoft other than following their fads. Because for the most part all they are is fads which come and go.
Yes, it would be interesting if there was no illegal labor force available. I guess in farm fields some folks think there is no choice but the illegals. In cities there are clearly choices and these people are certainly taking jobs that others would do.
See, we're not talking about "immigrants", we are talking about a work force that is here to get the benefits and send them back to Mexico. Immigrants - people that want to become part of the United States are a benefit to everyone... sort of. But a bunch of locusts that come in, grab as much as they can and take it back with them elsewhere are not needed.
Finally, all it takes is for the jobs to dry up. Arizona took some serious steps and there is still a flood of illegals leaving. Whole schools closing because there aren't enough children in the community any longer. When the jobs dry up, the people will leave all by themselves. We do not need to "send" anyone anywhere.
The idea of "property rights" is a relatively recent notion and one that is not shared by all people. To many cultures, some admittedly obsolete, the idea of some thing or some place "belonging" to anyone is utterly foreign. The Inuit and aboriginal folk in Australia have no concept of property and property rights.
Of course, while cultures that do not have property rights may have produced some interesting artwork, these cultures have virtually no other standing in the world today. They are not known for intellectual achievements, nor engineering works nor really anything at all. I would say it seems to have been necessary for the evolution of a people to actually create things and concepts of value for that people to develop the idea of personal property. Without it there seems to be a lack of motivation.
The difficulty with making banks liable for fraud is most of the attempted fraud is the other way around - people trying to get stuff from banks. Think about it. Wouldn't you claim that your account was incorrectly debited $500 from an ATM transaction that you didn't make if you could get away with it? Sure you would. So would everyone else in your city.
There is no way to prove the difference between "identity theft" on the scale where a bank is defrauded and outright dishonesty by the customer.
Now in reality most "identity theft" is accounted for because the FBI changed their reporting rules. Credit card fraud - using someone's credit card number - is now counted as identity theft. My guess is 90% of the "identity theft" that is reported is in reality simply credit card fraud. And people do not lose because of credit card fraud - merchants do.
Why aren't merchants up in arms because of credit card fraud? Simple, they have insurance. They don't really lose out either. In effect, it is a vicimless crime.
I view all file sharing as a commercial activity. It is designed to put music vendors out of business and to remove any possibility of there being revenue from the "sale" of music in any form.
If I can download whatever I want, whenever I want it and whereever I am, then I don't need to buy it. Period. Therefore, any possibility of a commercial transaction has been removed for me. And most of the people I know who will never, ever again pay for music. Because it is all available for free.
Now what exactly would I do if all this free downloading was not available? Hard to say, but the chances are excellent that I would buy something. Maybe not the same quantity as I take for free now, but still something. So the free availability of music has eliminated the possibility of some customers.
One primary rule of contracts is auditability. If you need to see their sales figures to determine how much they should be paying you, why should you trust those figures? How do you find out if they are right? If the answer is you just have to trust them, forget it - find something else to base payment on. Because they have every reason to lie and no reasons not to.
When measurement is required, you need to be able to check the measurement or it is meaningless. If I hand you a stick and say it is 12 inches long, you need to be able to test it. If you can't and have to trust me and there is money involved, you better figure I'm lying. Not a good way to build a commercial relationship.
There are certainly a large group of "evolved" people that think like you do. And I have a feeling that most people living in the West would agree that military force should only be used when absolutely necessary. I believe that for the most part, that principal has not been violated. Yes, even with Iraq.
The problem is that not everyone on the planet agrees. When your potential negotiating partner views you as a sentient being, with roughly the same needs, wants and requirements as they have there is a chance for negotiation. However, when your potential negotiating partner views you as vermin who must be exterminated for the health of the humans on the planet there is little chance at negotiation accomplishing anything. We do not negotiate with roaches or ants - we kill them. Muslims do not negotiate with Jews, they view them as subhumans fit only for extermination. Until we understand this or it changes, there will be armed conflicts.
The problem with giving "fair warning" is that for the most part the people that the US currently has disagreements with do not hold the same views on life or civilians as the rest of the West.
Should a country say to the leader of the US that they are going to do something which will kill thousands of civilians the response would be quite strong to avoid this, no matter what it took. On the other hand, the countries we are discussing are not all that interested in their civilian population. Not so much that they are ready and willing to sacrifice their people but more so that if it is necessary for a few civilians to die in the pursuit of the nation's goals, so be it.
There is also the entire topic of Islam's view of martyrdom. This is a concept that is relatively foreign to the West but is obviously strongly embraced under Islam. Offering the civilian population the chance to be martyrs is conveying a benefit to these people. This isn't the way people in the West think at all.
I think the concept of negotation or giving fair warning to a group of people that have demonstrated they (a) embrace martyrdom and (b) consider their potential negotiating partner to be vermin only suitable for extermination. I'd offer that "fair warning" constitutes an offer to hit us before we hit them and nothing more.
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There is also the idea that if you have a state (or municipality) sanctioned public transportation system, isn't in the state (or municipalitity) interest to make sure it is a monopoly? This is the sort of thing that destroys public transit systems.
It has something to do with competition, but only on the peripheral edges. If you have a public transit system with some sort of competition, what generally happens is the "better" routes - those that produce the most riders and revenue - get sucked away by the competition. This leaves the public transit system forced to either cut services or increase fares. And it just keeps happening until you have a very poor (in all senses) public transit system.
This is partly what happened in the US. Sure the "unlicensed" service can provide better and cheaper rides for some people. But they degrade the entire public transit system.
will be that building any creative work in digital form better be a charitable act. Once it is in digital form, you can't control it either through contracts or law. It is fair game for being "shared" out the wazoo.
I'd say that OCLC doesn't really stand much of a chance in this. We have grown up with the idea that if it isn't nailed down, it is going to be shared. Why do you think they might object to assisting in creating a competitor to themselves?
It is like being asked to train your replacement, only your replacement only has to work half days. Cheaper for the company - part time employee - and free training program for someone that just walks in off the street. Sounds like a real plan and even better than outsourcing.
No, the real secret is having someone else do all the hard work and then stealing it from them.
Ha ha. They thought they were going to get rich. Instead, they got to involantary contribute to the betterment of the society as a whole.
There are human cultures which never had any sort of property rights at all. Everything was either communal or owned by "Mother Earth". Private ownership wasn't ever considered.
Sounds pretty good, right? Until you realize that none of these cultures developed much past the writing stage and some not even that far. They never produced anything of any lasting importance either culturally or intellectually. Sure, the people living in these societies might have been pretty happy, until a disease came and wiped them out or a drought starved them to death. Pretty primitive way of life.
Without "ownership" and "property rights" that is about all a culture get to.
Unfortunately, the other side of that is whoever has the biggest distribution channel wins. You remove all barriers to distribution of something - no more licensing, royalties, patents, trademarks and copyrights - and now you have the big players out-distributing the small guys.
Think what happens when a song becomes "popular" and there are no barriers to distribution. Sony (or WalMart) just produces a CD. Maybe it is the original vocal talent, maybe not. Who cares? They win, the originator becomes a nobody.
Same thing with books. If WalMart can sell the book for $5 because it is printed in China, why would anyone even be able to find the "original" from the original author? So you think the author just makes a deal with WalMart... except what would be the motivation to give the author anything at all?
There are problems today with IP law, but throwing it away isn't the answer, unless you really love WalMart and Sony.
That plan ensures that nobody other tham large corporations will ever receive a patent again.
The "garage inventor" would be quickly displaced by a company that could exploit the invention. All they have to do is wait. Licensing a patent would be a thing of the past.
If the objective is to move all sources of revenue to major companies, well, I think you have hit on a real winner.
Back in the 1930's when construction was done by strong backs and no skills, that would have worked. And it did. Today, bridges are built by specialists with training. You want to drive on a bridge that was welded with by someone that never used one before? No? Neither does anyone else. The age of unskilled strong backs has ended. And we are discovering just how that relates to the "knowledge economy" now.
Face it, if everyone goes to college to learn how to be a "knowledge worker", who exactly will be working skilled construction jobs? Short answer is, nobody. And the harder getting a college education is pushed, the less chance we have of digging out of this hole.
Domestic construction equipement? Ha. Most of those products are made overseas now even through they have American manufacturer labels on them. It is cheaper to build a bulldozer in China and ship it to the US than to pay union scale wages plus deal with OSHA and environmental regulations. Unless we remove the US from WTO, we are stuck with making everything elsewhere - tariffs aren't legal anymore you understand. And any open-bid process would have to question why the government should spend 2x the money for "domestic made" equipment. Survival of the nation? Na, not a good enough reason.
Sure, I would like to see work camps replace welfare. If you are able-bodied you get nothing unless you are in a work camp doing something. Picking up trash, if nothing else. Cleaning up environmentally sensitive areas. Helping to build shelters for the homeless, whether they want them or not. But I think you would hear cries of "slavery" so much that the idea has no chance.
The problem isn't the relatively few smart people that might use such substances responsibly. The problem is the incredibly large number of people that couldn't understand they are doing something silly adding water to concentrated acid. This latter group vastly outnumbers the former, so much so that giving people free access to stuff would result in ... well, I would imagine a lot of damage.
See, we don't let kindergardners play in the kitchen. After the age of five or so people (mostly) understand things like knives are sharp, the range is hot, and you don't want to sit in the refrigerator. So the kitchen is pretty safe.
If your average apartment-dweller knew they had access to powerful acids, strong bases and such they might want to play around. You know, "Hey Charlie, watch THIS!!!" So we have relatively ineffectual regulations that keep Charlie's friend away from finding out how easy it is to get this stuff. This sounds like a good plan to me.
Bomb making? You can still get everything you need. Obviously, because people are still making bombs. It just takes a bit more motivation and perseverence.
Another problem is addictive personalities are going to be addicted. Period. Once there is an available supply the addiction kicks in. Societal norms, "morals" and fear of being ostracized prevents all of the addictive personalities from obtaining their first hit today. Erase that and we will likely have vastly larger numbers of people that are going to be serious, full-time drug users with no possibility of contributing to society.
Absent regulation, where exactly do we go? Freely distribute drugs to drive the prices down? Rely on genetics to sort out the non-productive drug users in a few generations? I don't think so. None of these solutions really work very well as shown by the pretty much free reign drugs have had since the 1950s in the US.
Sure it would be nice if such non-compete agreements could not be implemented. From what I have seen in the past it was unusual that an employer would get themselves into this situation in the first place - if a possible non-compete problem existed they just didn't bother with that applicant.
Once you start opening the door to such things, it is very difficult to just sue the company. What the non-complete may be relevent for may be something that is buried deep in the processes of the company and not at all apparent in the resulting product. And besides, that just opens the door to exploratory lawsuits because the person that got hired might be disclosing information they have no right to disclose.
This isn't just "personal knowledge" either. It is often "organization knowledge" that you have to know about in order to do your job at Company A. Upon going to Company B it is clear that if they only knew what your former employer did, they would get more sales, make products faster and cheaper, whatever.
Where some co-workers got themselves into trouble was (a) not disclosing there was a non-complete agreement in the first place and (b) trying to find out how much this knowledge might be worth to their new employer. As in "I might be able to offer some advice on how to do this better for $5000." Yes, I heard about that offer once. It was a while ago and resulted in immediate (same hour) termination of the employee.
They think all customers are criminals because a shocking number of them are in fact criminals. Most retail stores are experiencing losses up to 10% because of shoplifting, product defacement and the like.
So why would you not expect them to treat you like a criminal? When 1 in 10 people going through the store is stealing something or trying to steal something?
Sorry, but there isn't enough money in it for the level of oversight that you would like. That level of oversight would require either taxing the heck out of prostitution or subsidising the regulators from all taxpayers. Neither one is really going to fly.
There is another basic problem. If prostitution were an entprenural activity, that woudl be one thing. The problem is that it generally isn't. The "boss" almost always is explotative and turns it into a demeaning, eploitative job.
I don't know how to fix that. If you could get the explotation out of it, it could be an honorable profession fulfilling a real need. But the way it is conducted in the US today, it isn't and likely never can be.
Any major revision to the electrical grid is going to require reworking existing transmission lines. And there is the problem. Unless we can run transmission lines through areas that are unpopulated and not environmentally sensitive, the project is doomed if the leaders are paying any attention at all to environmentalists. And we need to ignore the hypocondriacs as well.
You see, today we have the forces of technology and growth confounded by ill-informed environmentalism and hypocondria. You can't build a power line anywhere near people because "everyone knows" these things cause cancer, mental retardation, impotence and a variety of other maladies. It might disturb the habitat of some lizard if we build it.
Obama has sent out messages during the campaign that he is going to respect these groups far more than any previous administration. There will be no growth, progress or anything else if he does this. He wants to turn off the coal-fired power plants, possibly without an alternative in place. Sure, it might make the environment better. But it will certainly transform the face of America overnight.
Most of the time "the peace" is defined by terms like "quiet enjoyment". Under these standards, public cursing is a violation of "the peace" and police will enforce that law.
Like it or not, poople a long time ago decided they did not like the idea of offensive people and did something about it.
The alternative leans far more towards "an armed society is a polite society" where if you are offensive you may be called upon to defend you offensiveness with your life.
Problem is, television is a great socializing force. It shows people in lots of situations interacting with others. There is a strong presumption, especially of the young, that this makes television shows an "authority". Whatever they see, they are going to be influenced to believe is acceptable.
A parent can try. However as soon as it becomes apparent that the parent (of the previous generation) isn't quite up on things with the current youth generation television showing members of the youth generation as well as "role models" for the youth generation, they are going to figure out that all this nonsense about cuss words, politeness and courtesy is just leftovers from their parents' generation. Or their grandparents' generation.
This is pretty much the state we are in today.
Let's see... Iraq was under sanctions for over 10 years and the sanctions where leaking badly. Because not everone believed in them or the UN's authority to impose them. Similarly, the UN issued hollow resolution after resolution condemming what was happening in Iraq until it was clear that the UN wasn't going to do anything except issue condemnations.
The entry into Iraq by the US was after years upon years of violations of various agreements. Finally, Iraq ejected the arms inspectors, sending a clear message that they were not going to be showing the UN what else they were doing. All the while the "Oil for Food" program was funnelling millions of dollars into the top leadership in Iraq and not the civilians as was intended. What was possible with all that money, aside from building ornate palaces? Who knows. Certainly there was enough money to buy virtually anything, including banned weapons.
As for isolationism, today we have closed most of the factories in the US because of excessive labor costs. Excessive when compared with third-world countries. The differential is so great that it is cheaper to make stuff halfway around the world and ship it here than it is to make it here. Deciding that we no longer wanted to do that would (a) raise prices on everything sold in the US overnight and (b) violate many international agreements about "open trade" and such. Nope, we're unlikely to do any of that.
The problem with Arizona is they may not have results until later on Wednesday. By then, the TV News folks will have announced the unofficial winner. That will probably take place by 10:00 PM Arizona time.
This pretty much means that voting in Arizona is pointless. The results aren't going to be of much use.
Oh wait, what if the results from Arizona change the entire election? Sure, do you really believe that if Obama is the winner before Arizona's results are counted that there could possibly be a change allowed to occur? I doubt it. We run "media elections" where the winner is projected from exit polls. The real results from machines like Arizona has take too long to get and tablulate. So they don't count anymore.
I keep hearing stuff like this. It must be nice to live in a world where you can dictate the platform to your customers. You say you are supplying their mission-critical application for Linux and they just (a) get another machine, (b) convert all their other stuff to Linux, or (c) tell theor other vendors to convert everything over to Linux.
Us, we get to work in a different (perhaps more familiar) world. We do not supply the application that completely rules how people do their jobs. Instead, it is a much smaller application that they just use in conjunction with 10-20 other applications. Now things being as they are, these other applications require Windows.
Sure, it would be great fun to be able to dictate to customers what platform they should run our applications on. But they are the ones with the money and they get to choose. If our stuff doesn't work they way they want it to, they will choose a different vendor that does in fact supply Windows applications.
And no, I haven't seen much in the way of lock in, other than customers needing things to work together. I have seen lots of development organizations suffering greatly from trying to follow Microsoft's bleeding edge. If you have tried to follow COM, ATL, DCOM, DCOM+, .Net (3.5 generations of it) and whatever else is coming along you have probably been suffering greatly. If every new language, framework or tool is something you have to try out in a product you have been suffering. There is another way to get along with Microsoft other than following their fads. Because for the most part all they are is fads which come and go.
Yes, it would be interesting if there was no illegal labor force available. I guess in farm fields some folks think there is no choice but the illegals. In cities there are clearly choices and these people are certainly taking jobs that others would do.
See, we're not talking about "immigrants", we are talking about a work force that is here to get the benefits and send them back to Mexico. Immigrants - people that want to become part of the United States are a benefit to everyone... sort of. But a bunch of locusts that come in, grab as much as they can and take it back with them elsewhere are not needed.
Finally, all it takes is for the jobs to dry up. Arizona took some serious steps and there is still a flood of illegals leaving. Whole schools closing because there aren't enough children in the community any longer. When the jobs dry up, the people will leave all by themselves. We do not need to "send" anyone anywhere.
The idea of "property rights" is a relatively recent notion and one that is not shared by all people. To many cultures, some admittedly obsolete, the idea of some thing or some place "belonging" to anyone is utterly foreign. The Inuit and aboriginal folk in Australia have no concept of property and property rights.
Of course, while cultures that do not have property rights may have produced some interesting artwork, these cultures have virtually no other standing in the world today. They are not known for intellectual achievements, nor engineering works nor really anything at all. I would say it seems to have been necessary for the evolution of a people to actually create things and concepts of value for that people to develop the idea of personal property. Without it there seems to be a lack of motivation.
The difficulty with making banks liable for fraud is most of the attempted fraud is the other way around - people trying to get stuff from banks. Think about it. Wouldn't you claim that your account was incorrectly debited $500 from an ATM transaction that you didn't make if you could get away with it? Sure you would. So would everyone else in your city.
There is no way to prove the difference between "identity theft" on the scale where a bank is defrauded and outright dishonesty by the customer.
Now in reality most "identity theft" is accounted for because the FBI changed their reporting rules. Credit card fraud - using someone's credit card number - is now counted as identity theft. My guess is 90% of the "identity theft" that is reported is in reality simply credit card fraud. And people do not lose because of credit card fraud - merchants do.
Why aren't merchants up in arms because of credit card fraud? Simple, they have insurance. They don't really lose out either. In effect, it is a vicimless crime.
I view all file sharing as a commercial activity. It is designed to put music vendors out of business and to remove any possibility of there being revenue from the "sale" of music in any form.
If I can download whatever I want, whenever I want it and whereever I am, then I don't need to buy it. Period. Therefore, any possibility of a commercial transaction has been removed for me. And most of the people I know who will never, ever again pay for music. Because it is all available for free.
Now what exactly would I do if all this free downloading was not available? Hard to say, but the chances are excellent that I would buy something. Maybe not the same quantity as I take for free now, but still something. So the free availability of music has eliminated the possibility of some customers.
One primary rule of contracts is auditability. If you need to see their sales figures to determine how much they should be paying you, why should you trust those figures? How do you find out if they are right? If the answer is you just have to trust them, forget it - find something else to base payment on. Because they have every reason to lie and no reasons not to.
When measurement is required, you need to be able to check the measurement or it is meaningless. If I hand you a stick and say it is 12 inches long, you need to be able to test it. If you can't and have to trust me and there is money involved, you better figure I'm lying. Not a good way to build a commercial relationship.
There are certainly a large group of "evolved" people that think like you do. And I have a feeling that most people living in the West would agree that military force should only be used when absolutely necessary. I believe that for the most part, that principal has not been violated. Yes, even with Iraq.
The problem is that not everyone on the planet agrees. When your potential negotiating partner views you as a sentient being, with roughly the same needs, wants and requirements as they have there is a chance for negotiation. However, when your potential negotiating partner views you as vermin who must be exterminated for the health of the humans on the planet there is little chance at negotiation accomplishing anything. We do not negotiate with roaches or ants - we kill them. Muslims do not negotiate with Jews, they view them as subhumans fit only for extermination. Until we understand this or it changes, there will be armed conflicts.
The problem with giving "fair warning" is that for the most part the people that the US currently has disagreements with do not hold the same views on life or civilians as the rest of the West.
Should a country say to the leader of the US that they are going to do something which will kill thousands of civilians the response would be quite strong to avoid this, no matter what it took. On the other hand, the countries we are discussing are not all that interested in their civilian population. Not so much that they are ready and willing to sacrifice their people but more so that if it is necessary for a few civilians to die in the pursuit of the nation's goals, so be it.
There is also the entire topic of Islam's view of martyrdom. This is a concept that is relatively foreign to the West but is obviously strongly embraced under Islam. Offering the civilian population the chance to be martyrs is conveying a benefit to these people. This isn't the way people in the West think at all.
I think the concept of negotation or giving fair warning to a group of people that have demonstrated they (a) embrace martyrdom and (b) consider their potential negotiating partner to be vermin only suitable for extermination. I'd offer that "fair warning" constitutes an offer to hit us before we hit them and nothing more.