I have to say that I totally agree with you. US isn't the same anymore, at least that's the impression I have gotten. A few years ago, I still planned that one day I would enroll to a good US university and study an MBA degree. Now I have to say that I don't anymore want to go to study in US, and this is mostly because of US seems more and more like an police state.
Before you go on and start to tell me about your constitution and the freedom it guarantees, I just have to say that I know your constitution, and I really admire, but.. The big but is that even thought in paper you are the land of the free, in practise your freedoms are limited. You have a police force that uses force without hesitation, you have prosecutors that do anything to get a conviction be it right or wrong, and lastly it seems that most the citizens don't care about that because bad things don't happened to good people.
I should also add that in this case, and in previous cases in example the UCLA tasering of student, are just shocking. First of all, in Finland nor in other European countries, we don't have anything remotely like campus police that was in action here. We don't have armed police nor guards in our universities. Also when we have an very important person visiting, like in example an EU commissioner or minister, they may have their own body guard but definitely no police waiting for action.
It's just so weird to watch out how things are in US. I'm sorry, but as long as your country acts like an police state, I really wouldn't want to come there. I also hope that one day you get your act together and decide to go back and be reasonable again. I really hope that.
There is a difference between "choose" and coerced. Basically these countries were told to fix their economy or no more trade. If China did to us what we have done to many developing nations we would be worse than Russia after the Soviet collapse. The only reason they don't is it would hurt their economy as well. Super powers have a different standing because of their exceptional production and consumption. Developing nations are easier to replace.
Argentina and other countries who have run into trouble are not coerced by threating to cut trade to them. If a country doesn't pay it's debts or won't start to fix the problems of its economy as guided by the IMF and World Bank, they just won't get loans before they change their policies. That's not coercing, that's reasonable policy.
It should also be noted that Argentina wasn't first country in financial trouble. In example in the beginning of 90s Finland was hit by a deep depression in which GDP dropped 13% and unemployment rose from 3,5% to 18%. At the time Finland was very near bankruptcy and in the baddest days of the depression, leading politicians warned the people that if big changes were not made, then there would be no change but to give the country into guidance of IMF and World Bank. Those warnings eventually worked, changes were made, and after few years Finland emerged from the depression. In the case of Argentina, it seems that the leading politicians didn't do their job and citizens continued living in an illusion.
No, they aren't. They are borrowing from private bankers that live in those countries. Those bankers have a racket. They also have money bet on a bunch of multinational corporations. The U.S. tax payers don't have any money to lend - it is all going to pay the interest on the national debt!
Actually both IMF and World Bank get money from their member countries, meaning basically that money comes directly from government budget or from coffers of central bank, that in any case means that the money comes eventually from private citizens. It should also be noted the US debt isn't that big a deal, the US public debt was 64,7% of GDP, which is not bad as in example Eurozone has 70,5% and whole European Union has 63,2%. Some countries like Belgia and Greece have their dept over 100% of GDP. So US situation is not that bad.
No? Then how exactly are we keeping our lights on in the U.S.? I live in the county. My taxes went up 400% but we are still facing a deficit. The State is running a deficit. The Federal government has a deficit in the Trillions. How come other countries get called on it in the millions but we can run negative in deficit at all levels of government without repercussions?
Well the short answer is that you have the worlds most powerful army that acts as the world police. The neat part of being world police is that commodities like oil is priced and public debt in US dollars, and as you own the printing presses to press more dollars, having public or trade deficit doesn't matter so much as you can just print more dollars. Also as the rest of the world uses US dollar to trade, the inflation that comes from printing more money is outsourced to the rest of the world.
As long as US dollar has its current status, the US can keep going on without big problems. However if European countries get their act together and decide to form a comparable force, meaning centralizing foreign and trace policies to Brussels and building an unified Euroarmy that can sent carrier groups to different parts of world to protect peace and democracy, then the status of US dollar could change. That unfortunately and fortunately won't probably happen in my life time as it seems that European countries really aren't that interested on building imperiums again, which is definitely a good thing. Of course the Chinese maybe willing to build an imperium but then again before 2030 or in late case 2050, they just won't have the economic muscle to challenge US dominance.
Argh, I just can't understand how some people can be so interested about anything concerning iPhone: I'm looking at you Slashdot editors, bloggers, telecom journalist etc.. The iPhone basically is just like the Ericsson R380s, but with newer components. Just look at the thing, it's very much like iPhone. Actually it follows same concept as the iPhone: it's completely locked down, so no addable software, and it was designated to mainly function with the network. According to a Swed who I had a pleasure to meet in a trip in Sweden, said Ericsson at the time of the phones introduction, in 2000, said that it wasn't a phone but an terminal.
If there are any engineers from Sony-Ericsson reading my comment, please for the love of god and everything that is good, bring back the R380s with modern technology. The P-series that Sony-Ericsson introduced afterwards is just rubbish when compared to R380. The R380s had the right form factor, it just felt right. Actually when reminiscing my memories of it, I actually took it from drawer, the phone functions still, except it's OS is unfortunately corrupted with out possibility to have a master reset via phone.:-( Does somebody have an advice on how to get it reset otherwise?
PS. Actually there is one big advance that the R380 had: as a Finn having the R380 and not a Nokia phone, you got instantly more friendlier reception, "oh you have an Ericsson, your mine friend!";-)
It seems that you don't understand how Nokia works. Nokias competitive advantage isn't design or superior technology, it's main competitive advantage is mass production of phones and phone models. Yes, Nokia doesn't just produce massive amounts of phones, it produces massive amounts of different phone models. The idea is simple, produce as many phone models as quickly as you can, and hope that at least few will be big hits and the others will just do.
It also seems that you really don't have a grasp of mobile phone markets. Nokia isn't just top at the moment, they have been for almost the last 10 years at the top. They currently have 37% market share globally. They are the most profitable mobile phone company not just now, but have been for the long time being. When we look at technology, production and marketing abilities, there really isn't any other phone company as Nokia.
On technology wise Symbian is the number one mobile OS. It was originally developed for the handhelds and has been powering them from the days of Psion. Most of the smart phones in the world are powered by Symbian and the platform has support not just from Nokia and Sony-Ericsson, but from other handset manufacturers also. As what comes to interface, yes the iPhone has a pretty interface which polished to death, but news flash, that same polishing can be found from the newer phones. Also it should be noted, it just isn't one interface Nokia is catering, they have Series 60, they are Series 40, they customize and try quite a lot. They may not be as innovative as Apple, but why be when they can just copy, imitate and mass produce.
As to your question about what happens when and if Apple will produce its low market version of iPhone, the answer to that one is easy: Nokia will just copy it, produce handful of new models, drop margins if needed for those phones and make sure that there is no way for Apple to succeed in the market. Actually I would argue that for now it's even impossible for Apple to try to gain any strong foothold from the markets, they have shown their cards are they are being copied and out imitated. It should also be noted that Apple isn't known to play in the mass production league, they are a company serving niche segments and are to do that with a bigger gross margin.
I would suggest that you take a visit to a Nokia NYCs Store or maybe visit their European pages to see on just what and how much they offer. Nokias European homepage
What? Where does this end. Repeat after me. Europe is not socialist. Europe is not in the state of socialism. Europe is not going to be socialist.
I'm sorry that I have to make this comment again, but I feel it's very important to point that Europe is not an example of socialism in action. The reason for this is that marking Europe as an example of socialism waters down the bad connotations associated to socialism and make it seem like that socialism really is an good alternative to market driven capitalism. No! Absolutely no. The Europe today, prosper and free, being one the power houses of global economy and politics wasn't build on socialism, it was build in foundation of democracy, market economy and social responsibility. Note! Being socially responsible doesn't equate to socialism.
If you want to see real socialism in action you go to North-Korea or get a time machine and jump back to eighties and visit Eastern Bloc countries and Soviet Union. They were socialist countries with socialist economies. If you had the opportunity, like I did, as an child to visit Soviet Union, all thought in the end of the eighties, you would see the real results of socialism: economy in ruins, rampant poverty and misery.
No. Please don't use Europe as an example of socialism, because it isn't an example of it. Capitalism with checks and balances isn't socialism.
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To comment the debate about SBC (AT&T) on their part with Telekom, I would say that is an perfect example on government having a bad effect to markets by making an bad decision. It should be noted however that I can understand the logic here, even in the US AT&T had a government mandated monopoly to long distance calls, and some have stated that without it, it wouldn't have been possible for US to build nation wide fiber optic network in the seventies to serve the whole nation.
Thought in the US there was adequate technology, capital and most importantly paying customers available, so it could have been probable that the US would had the nation wide fiber optic network even without AT&T doing the work. In South Africa it seems that there just weren't either enough paying customers to make it lucrative to build a nation wide network instead on engaging to monopolist practices geared towards profit optimization.
Also as in the same time the rest of the world, Europe including, were facing off government monopolies in telecommunication, the government decision to give an monopoly to a one company can be seen as a very very bad decision.
MS marketing department announced today in a bit to prove MS reputation as a socially conscious company a series of public service messages. The series includes as an example messages titled "Buying software is being American" and "Communists are evil terrorist". As an example on what to come, the MS public service team, previously known as the marketing, gave us a quick preview on one of their new public service messages. Here it comes!
"Hi, I'm sk0t. I'm a bad person and an convict. I wasn't always like this. My family was an all around good honest hard working church going your typical American family. My life was just good and I had all good things coming at me. Then one day it all changed. I met some new people over the Internet and as I were very naive back then, I trusted them and thought they were like me, loving god fearing persons,, but I was very wrong! They talked a lot about this thing called Linux and how it was better and more free than Windows. As then I was an freedom loving American I thought that having more freedom would be good, and listened them and tried this Linux. Oh boy, if I had known then what I know now, I newer would have done that. As soon as I started using Linux and listening more of these people, my life took an more deeper turn down to a hell. My family and friends tried to stop me, they intervened and read the holy bible to me, but it was too late, I was too deep in the world of sin, that there was no going back. No, the only way for me was down, down to become an dirty criminal stealing peoples hard earned work for my own pleasure. Finally my career as an professional criminal master mind became to an end, the police got me, and I was brought in front of the law to answer for my sins. I just crumbled then, my life flashed in front of me, I saw my family and all the good that god had gave me, and I saw all the harm and wrong I had done. I repented! I confessed my quilt and throed myself in mercy of justice. Luckily for me, the good judge saw that there was still some good in me. I did some time in jail, it was good, I deserved that. After jail time I was allowed to go back home. They even were so decent that they made me install Windows back to my computer. It feels so good. Every day when I'm using Windows, it feels like that I'm becoming a better person, and I feel that I'm liberated from my wicked ways. This is my story. I hope you have learned something from this and if you haven't I have just one thing to say: kids don't do jail, don't use Linux. Thank you for your time.
And next up we have a story about Slashdot readers having too much time in a friday.
Actually you need more engineers to lower or at least slow increases in salaries of engineers to keep US as an attractive place for engineering companies. The situation is that in the US engineers are paid very well compared to rest of the world or even when compared to other developed nations such as Japan, Germany, UK, etc.. This is the reason why many companies have outsourced so much of their engineering workforce to places like India and China, they are in search of cost savings. Thought it should be mentioned that my personal opinion is that in many cases outsourcing has also been motivated by the fad of outsourcing and incompetent management who don't understand engineering nor how to manage it.
In example here in Finland where collage and university education has been free for ages, the government has for long kept salaries of engineers in check by having relatively high intake in engineering schools. The idea is basically meet the demand, and by meeting the demand keep salaries of engineers in check in order to make Finnish engineering and industrial companies be more competitive. Actually one the reason why Nokia rose and became a leader in mobile communication is partly attributed to a fact that Nokia could afford having more engineers than it's competitors and thus had a competitive advance against it's competitors. Also as Nokia grew and other high tech industry sectors followed it and ITC sector became one of the main sectors of Finnish industry and economics, engineering salaries didn't grow as much as government increased intake in engineering schools even more. Actually the intake was increased so much that the intake amount was bigger than the number of students studying advanced math in high school. For this reason salaries in engineering didn't grow so much and they are still quite competitive against other countries which has lead to a situation where even as manufacturing of electronics has largely been moved, the engineering jobs are still here and the outsourcing fad that was in the world didn't hit Finland much.
It's a good question should the US try to get more students to study engineering or not, and what the cost of that operation can be. US has many world class companies and high tech engineering, i.e. example Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments and much more in fields of medicine, petrochemical, bio-engineering etc.. I really don't see those companies leaving the US as there just either isn't enough benefits to outsource or the political risk is too high, in example if Intel opened an chip manufacturing plant in China, they for sure their manufacturing techniques would be spied out in few years. Maybe having free tuition would put more people in fields of engineering, but then again it wouldn't change the underlying problem in the US which namely is low appreciation for science, math and engineering in general. Maybe a better solution and definitely cheaper, although a political suicide, would be to remove sports from the curriculum of US high schools. I just can't imagine how it's possible that in US so much importance is put to a schools football team nor all the hype surrounding it. At least this solution would in a greater time period start to repair the culture that is so much geared towards athletics and sports in general as the only thing that would be practiced in high school would be studying.
PS. About IBM and Lenovo. PC business now days is basically commodity business. To put a together a PC doesn't require much engineering as almost all the parts come from specialized suppliers and the PC manufacturers only functions are to put PCs together cheaply and effectively and then market them. As IBM is an engineering company and specialized to high-tech and solution provision it wasn't that large surprise that they sold, or in other words spinned out the PC making, as IBM was largely the active partner who created the deal largely and put out the financing for it.
You seem to forget that about half of the age class, after graduating from the 9th class of elementary school did choose a major, namely those that chose to go vocational or trade school. Actually you too did choose a major, that major just happened to be all-a-round preparation for collage or university.
It should also be noted that choosing vocational or trade school at the age of 16 isn't a decision that closes doors for the rest of your life. A friend of mine, that I first met when studying at University of Vaasa, at teenage didn't want to go to a high school and chose trade school. Later after graduating from trade school he wanted to more challenge and applied to Vaasa to study M.Sc.Econ and when doing that got interested about engineering, and after graduating from Vaasa continued at HUT (Helsinki University of Technology) to get a degree in engineering. So making a choice in young age doesn't mean that you can't progress in life.
Also it should be noted that to many students studying and academics are just not interesting. Many want to learn a profession, get a job, start a family, buy a house and get kids in early age and I have to say that there isn't anything wrong in this. If that half of my elementary school class that chose vocational or trade school had been forced to go to high school, they would have seriously puked at studying more and also in the process made sure that rest of us who wanted to study couldn't concentrate on studying.
In the end, the question isn't should teens choose their profession or career early on, but why not they shouldn't do it? I know myself many metal workers, cooks, secretaries, hair stylist etc.. that chose their profession early on and haven't had any regrets. They are proud of their professional skills and they like what they do. How is it so bad thing to let young people make a decision about their career in young age? They can always change what they do and go to study again, if they choose so.
I just can't understand what is so bad about alcohol testers and why so called old fashioned sobriety test would be better than that. At least here in Finland, and other parts of Europe too that I know, police use only alcohol testers and they are widely accepted and seen as the best way to get the job done. To me sobriety test seems just so very random way to measure is the driver under too much alcohol or not, I would image that with that kind of test a cop can use his/her judgment and either let the driver of the hook or book him, at least in the borderline cases. With testers its easy, you just blow and the tester will tell what your score is, and the score is what it is. And if for some instance you don't want to blow or you think that there is some wrong with the device or there are some other things to be noted, you can always demand to be taken to a local hospital for a blood test.
For the record, I think that BMI is too simplistic way to measure has a person bad life habits or not, and the judgment should be based on some other measurement.
On a note about athletes and them having BMI over 30, the question is not about are they now living good, it's about how are they going to live the next 10, 20 to 30 years. Usually the situation with persons BMI development is that once it goes up, it usually doesn't come down, at least not to the levels it someday was. So for in example we have a boxer now who has very high BMI, at the point where he/she stops training all that muscle weight will in very short time transform to regular fat weight. At least all the people I know who have been athletes and stopped their career, have turned into more or less having the same weight with less muscle and more fat. So from an insurers part there would be some case to asses persons insurance fees when they get over or under some points.
Then again, if we took this path and start to asses different things, then occupation, profession, living history and so on should be assessed too. Unfortunately I think that in this point of time, collecting, analyzing and processing that information would be too costly and the end result would be too unsure. Maybe this will happen in the future when our health and DNA are tracked via information systems throe our whole lifetime. Until then it can be debated does using some identifying techniques like BMI really benefit insurance company, individual insurance takers, individual health, national health and so on. This whole thing could also be just an get rich scheme from the part of the insurance company.
What is the news here? Red Hat is in the desktop market already, thought their offering is more geared or at least branded for the enterprise use: Red Hat Enteprise Linux 5 Desktop. It seems that they are just going to brand their Enterprise Desktop, add some multimedia and maybe a new colorful GNOME theme and call it Global Desktop Linux. Whoah!
The real news in here I would say is that Red Hat is gearing towards other than corporate customers. The question is, is this a defensive maneuver against Canonical or does Red Hat see that the consumer desktop linux market could be opening up? Or is it both? Could be both.
The second question, if they are not doing this purely for playing defense, is how serious they are? Are they so serious that they will maybe make a new multimedia player for Linux, or will they bundle in example iTunes or Real with it, or are they just going to hack up the usual suspects. I really would hope that they have something new to offer, as basically the situation is that multimedia support works but is not plea sent. Peasent here means the same as user experience with iTunes and in less extend Windows Media is.
ODF definitely has a future. The question isn't about that, it's about when ODF will come the mainstream choice in A) corporate environment and B) in home environment.
For me as software developer one thing hindering ODF adaptation is that there isn't or at least I don't know any APIs that allow me easily create ODF documents. As in example our application can export data to Excel in it's native format. We achieve this by using the excellent Java Excel API. We would add ODF support straight away if there would be same kind of API to create ODS documents. Also as ODS is open and not closed as Excel, there would be probably better support allowing full generation of a documents, i.e. generation of charts, this in fact would lead to a situation where we could add more "intelligence" to generated documents and benefit our users via added automation.
PS. I there is already an working API to generate ODF documents, then please reply and post link a to it.
PS2. Yes, I could also myself look onto ODF format specification and create my own code to generate documents, but as generating ODF documents at least in this time doesn't bring bacon home, and isn't even in the area of my expertise I just would like a ready to use code for it.
You don't need any classes, just go to a nightclub and start picking up women. In my experience trying to pickup a girl is the best way to learn social interactions. Basically when you are trying to pickup girls in a nightclub you learn 1) to identify and classify people who are potentially interested about you, 2) to learn on how to introduce yourself to a new person, 3) to read signs on are they interested or not and 4) to leave gracefully from a situation. The skills you learn this way help you in every other social situation too.
On a note about the general discussion about IQ and sex, in my own experience, I couldn't get sex nor girlfriend in high school because I just didn't know how to read body language and other signs on another person. Eventually when I turned 18 and went with friends to bar, I just tried to pick up girls failing of course miserably. Luckily after a year I got better and when I entered university there was no problem picking up or just socialising with other people.
PS. This is just the software development method applied to a real world. You run the code, crash it, find bug, fix it, and repeat the loop hundreds of times until you succeed. In real you literally repeat the loop hundreds of times before succeeding, but I think it's eventually worth it;-)
No it's not. Venture Capital is not for basic research, it's for commercialization of already researched technology. If you don't put money for basic research, if you don't put it to high risk research, then you won't have any new technology that you can commercialize. And as I said, the US, Japanese, Chinese, Russians etc.. are already doing the same thing and thus it would be economical and industrial suicide to not do it.
As what comes to Europes economic growth and it's businesses, taxation or it's rate are not to be blamed. Yes, in some countries like German the tax laws are a mess, but all in all they are pretty workable. What does instead stifle businesses are work laws, or more on inflexibility in the job market: French and Germany come to a mind quick. If I would start from somewhere, it would changes to free job markets not stifle working government private sector partnership that does bring food on the table
This project is not waste of money nor is usually the normal R&D funds, benefits and grants given by the EU and member states. The money is intended to lower the risk on venturing into a totally new industry or on a new technology. Basically the idea is to put some public funding to encourage the private money to follow and get the ball running and as the ball keeps on rolling the society gets back it's initial funding via new firms, via new employment, via increased revenues and so on. These activities are very normal to any industrialized nation: Japanese developed their industries together with their government (Ministry of International Trade and Industry); the US is also heavily involved in funding new technology and industries via heavy R&D programs in the military; and the China and Russia all are doing the same thing. Compared to previous examples, the EU and members states fund too little new development, and that's a problem.
On a note I think that Theseus project will be very interesting and hopefully very rewarding. It's especially interesting as the main firms in it will be SAP and Siemens. SAPs systems are basically running in every major corporation and are responsible for lots of information handling. Siemens too has it's hands on very interesting technology, especially in industrial sectors. If by this project they technologies that allow SAP, Siemens and other vendors to get more information and make their systems more intelligent, the rewards to them and to the society would be quite large.
On a different note, a good example of how governments can help their booming corporations to succeeds can be found here from Finland. I would say that with out Finnish governments help by starting and guiding research projects, university programs, student intake, granting cheap development loans, reviewing tax laws and etc.. there wouldn't be such a enormous success as Nokia is today. That's just a one example. We need public money also, we do also need private money, but to keep up with the USA, Japan, China and other, we here in the Europe have to use public funding too to make sure European industries and firms will be successful in international competition.
True pro's leave work at morning after an all-nighter and go to sleep. Doh!
On a more serious note, those of us who have to interact with people and especially customers, pulling all-nighters and going bed at morning is not a viable option. I myself belong to this unfortunate group. I start my morning with a few cups of coffee, reading the local newspaper, checking news sites including Slashdot, reading emails and checking calendar and writing back emails. I would say that I spend every morning at least an hour or two doing this. There are few reasons for this mainly: 1) I want to do it, and 2) my brains just wont work good enough to do anything more complex.
On a note I would recommend this to all employees especially if the company you are working has free breakfast. Why spend the morning at home when you can just go to shower, put cloths and head to workplace to start your morning. This has the benefit that you can meet and connect with people in morning with less hassle as you are not disturbing their work.
This is bullshit anti-EU rhetoric. There is no EU directive that says "police can keep an secret list of sites and ip-address that they think are serving child pornography and police can give this list to the voluntary ISPs who will use the list to filter the Internet". NO NO NO, this all is the making of Swedish government. The blame rests entirely on the Swedish government and the culprits behind this attack against personal freedoms can be found from there.
God damn, there maybe many faults in EU, but don't make up lies to oppose it.
The image service is not TPB, it's a third party in this case. To give you an example: site A is doing something and site B gets the blame. Even so, if this accusation of image service hosting some content that is illegal, then the police should start an official inquiry on the subject, and if found evidence, charge the subject in a court of law. In this case police says that they might put TPB on list a child pornography filtering list, but they don't show any evidence or example that could be found from TPB, they are just making accusations with out backup.
On another note, if the police has evidence that TPB is hosting or linking to child pornography content, and they don't make an inquiry and press charges, they themselves are breaking the law as they are making a libel against TPB. So my message for the Swedish police is, put up or shut up.
This is the perfect example on why governments should never be given a blank cheque: they will eventually use it wrong.
Here in Finland we have the same system in place as the Swedish. The police keeps a secret list of sites and their ip-addresses that they claim serve child pornography, and the ISPs will use this list to filter these sites in voluntary basis. I would say in this case voluntary means "voluntary" as all ISPs are using the list to filter out content, and all though there is no law regarding this list and it's usage, it's still a form of government inflicted censorship as when this subject was in conversation, basically everybody that was against this system were pointed out to be supporters of child pornographers. In my mind the system in place in both Finland and Sweden are illegal and they are against our constitutions. It's just to bad that nobody has had the stand up and but the system and it's sponsor in court.
I think that the whole system is wrong, and definitely think putting TPB to it is very wrong, but then again if the Swedish police could be so stupid as to but TPB to the list, there would be some strong case for TPB to take the matter in to a court on basis of illegal government censorship. Even thought the government is not breaking the letters of the constitution they definitely are breaking the spirit of the constitution and the freedoms it grants.
Definitely I'm not happy the way things are there, but when choosing on supporting an dictatorship or not supporting it, the definitive choice is not to support it, when choosing between military operation and economic sanctions, the best choice is economic sanctions as it doesn't directly cost lives. If US would trade with Cuba and it's regime, it would the same as supporting it and thus allowing it to suppress it's people, especially as the said regime doesn't have any plans to start reforms on transforming itself to a democracy.
If you don't like your government, if you want the regime to go, my suggestion would for you to make a choice: either continue living like you do, or form a small group, take arms and take on the government. You may want to take some examples on Hungarian revolution in 1956, which unfortunately was suppressed by the Soviet Union. Hungarian revolution is a model on how quickly regimes can collapse. In case of Hungary it started from a small incident and left to country wide anger against the government and quickly lead to situation where citizens openly attacked pro-soviet communists and state police: basically storming in to a place and killing them at an instance. Actually better example would be Romanian revolution which lead to the collapse of the regime and execution of it's leader televised on national television. So things can happen and you can overthrow your government.
If not supporting dictatorships and wanting to do something to change them makes an person an asshole then I'm to proud to be one.
I agree that sanctions and trade embargoes cause regimes to be more anti-US, more aggressive and more violent, but the big thing here to remember is that as these regimes become more hostile they also become a lesser threat as their society, economy and industries are slowly strangled to death by cutting their ties to outside world. In example if trade would have continued normally with Iran and west after the Islamic revolution, Iran would probably now have many nuclear reactors, have had sooner all equipments and materials to make a nuclear bomb and have a better and more modernly equipped army thus being a bigger threat as it is now.
It should also be noted that sooner or later the people of a country that is in under sanctions and embargoes will rise up and revolt or the inner circle of government makes a coup d'etat and stops the activities that have put the country and it's people under suffering and misery. It may take longer time than sending few carrier groups and marines to the country, but it's still all in all cheaper and more safer method on destroying the regime.
All in all I think that sanctions and embargoes work. They also would work better if all industrialised countries where behind in them. In example of Cuba it's a pity that we Europeans trade with them. I'm sure that if Europe and Canada would now cut all ties to Cuba the regime would collapse in over night as the last breathing holes for the regime would be closed.
It seems that in Slashdot many people have some what strange idea on what socialism is and where they think that they are seeing it.
In socialism the people via government own and control the means of production. Communism is not alternative to socialism, but a way to enter socialism via armed struggle. Social democracy is an alternative way to achieve socialism by transforming the state peacefully into socialism step by step. In the world where we are living, there is no country that is practising socialism.
You said that countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark are socialist, that's dead wrong. The countries you cited are free capitalistic market economies. The only difference in Nordic and usually in European countries is that they have set up safety nets for their citizen: i.e. well-fare, public education and health-care etc.. Having these things doesn't make a country socialist, it makes it a well-fare state.
When we look at south America and especially what Chavez is doing to Venezuela, they are more or less committed on idea of national socialism: using the economy of a country and it's means of production to further national agendas and it's manifested destination. That is wrong and stupid. They are only going to wreck their economies and after they have used their national resources like oil and gas, their economies will crumble down. The only way to achieve prosperity is to invest in infrastructure, means of production and to abilities of citizens. Nordic countries nor Europe weren't build in a decade, the prosperity that we have and that takes care of welfare state is the product of hundreds of years work and investment into infrastructure and means of production.
I just downloaded Safari and although it's a nice looking and seemingly faster browser than Firefox and Internet Explorer, there are negative sides as well. I tested Safari with our web application and noticed that it didn't render text that was inside bold tags. Of course this is basically our own fault because our pages use XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and that standard doesn't have a bold tag. Then again this could be a good time to go over the code and fix it to more standard compatible.
On a different note, after we have fixed our web application, I for one will be using Safari in all demonstrations. The Mac OSX look in buttons, text boxes and so on just adds that one thing to demonstration that makes our application to shine more.:)
PS. It would nice to hear if other people have had same kind of experiences with their net pages and web applications. If Safari has really dropped support for non-standard tags, this could explain quite much of its speed advantage.
There is no question would Europeans defend themselves or not, they would defend and the defensive warfare would be bitter. I myself, as all able Finnish men, have went to the army and been thought to fight against invading enemy. Officially Finland doesn't have any enemy, but in the army and past army, the one and only threat which against we have been thought to fight is Russia. If major war would break up with Russia, Finland would be the front-line country and we would be phasing the enemy first in pushing the invading force out of capital (Russians favor decapitating attack) and if that wouldn't work, Finnish forces would enter guerrilla warfare until western forces would drove invading force away. This is basically same in every European country. Even thought Europeans don't in every discussion jump to the guns and swear to fight until the death, that doesn't mean that they wouldn't. The reason why people go to army, why they are willing to bear arms and give their lives is that they have families, wife's and children, these are causes to fight.
As to question about can Europeans defend themselves, the answer is yes. As to question is there a combined European force, the answer is there is. Most of the EU member countries are part of NATO and their forces are part of it's command structure. Also countries that are EU members, but not NATO countries are very close to NATO and they have generally made sure that their armies are NATO compatible. So Europeans could and would defend themselves united via NATO structure. As to what comes to future and Russians preparation I would like to point out that they are already using a considerable high percentage of their GDP to army and raising it isn't probable or even wise, and it should also be pointed out that Russia's economic growth is totally depended on rising oil and gas prices not on major growth of their industrial base, so the Russian army that we see today is probably coming at it's peak. It should also be pointed out that even thought Russia does have high number of tanks, air-crafts and personnel, their forces are outdated and their technological sophistication is far from west. Also on a note, the usual Russian conscript isn't very motivated, they are treated like scum by their superiors and sacrificed with out no hesitation: they have no real motivation to die. If the push would come, there would be no doubt that Europe couldn't defend itself.
Also where do you get idea that European countries are bankrupt from social spending? Yes European countries spend quite much on in example public health-care, public education and public welfare, but these expenses also are paid in US and in other countries: the difference is that money just cycles through government and not directly from individual. It can be debated is it better to cycle the money via government or via private individuals. If there would be a need to spend more on defense, that could be done, that would mean cuts in some places, but not radical. I still would like to question the rational on Europe to spend much more to defense: Europeans already in combination spend half what US spends and quadruple what Russia and China spend, that is enough to keep Russian in line and US is our ally and will be in foreseeable future.
I also would like to know example on how Russian can threat us to submission? They would threat us with a nuclear holocaust? That would lead to same happening in Russia. They would threat us with invasion? From that moment they would have united Europe against them with all it's resources. They would threat to cut gas and oil? Their economy would collapse in the same moment.
You also should notice that international relationships aren't just between two, they are between everybody. If Russian would threaten Europe, US would defend it, and China would take advance on situation to take Siberia. If there is going to be a war, it will be world war and it will be a total war. For Russia to even think making an invasion, they would have plan how can the
What are you smoking?! I don't know what propaganda you have been reading, but Europe most certainly isn't a fat pig waiting for slaughter, it has real military muscle. You might want to read more about from Wikipedia under Military of European Union. In there you can see how much money is spend by member countries on their defense, and there is also a chart showing you how much money combined is spent in Europe compared to US, Russia and China. When EU members are spending over 250 billion dollars on their defense, half of US defense budget and quadruple to China and Russia, EU is for certain not a fat pig waiting for slaughter.
Also you really don't seem to understand how vital good economic base is to modern warfare. When we talk about economics we speak about country's industrial ability to produce war material and equipment and it's ability to finance the production. Now at peace time EU member countries are spending in average 1-2% of their GDP to defense, if there would be credible threat against well being of Europe, the defense budgets would immediately jump in par with US which is spending 4-5% of it's GDP to it's defense. So in layman's terms, what the economic base allows is massive production of Eurofigters and Leopards to defend Europe.
On a note UK and France in combination have 550 nuclear weapons which of course compared to US and Russia isn't much, but still represents a credible threat. It may not be enough to oblitariate US or Russia but it would for certain level down most of their infrastructure.
Maybe next time when you start speaking about Europe and it's defense, you should first look on facts and see that Europe isn't anymore just booty divided by US and Russia, but an independent world power in formation. In Europe many still remember all the horrible things of second world war and all the pain and suffering that was caused in the war, and thus see that Europe should not engage to wars in general and especially not build empires. What Europe is doing is building itself and spreading peace and prosperity to it's neighbours and other countries by increasing international trade and exchange and influencing governments of other countries by means of dialogue and diplomacy. Even though Europe nowadays seems more like house cat that just wants comfort for itself and others, it doesn't mean that it couldn't defend itself. Is it so horrible that one of the power houses of world chooses not to engage in world domination and empire building?
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I have to say that I totally agree with you. US isn't the same anymore, at least that's the impression I have gotten. A few years ago, I still planned that one day I would enroll to a good US university and study an MBA degree. Now I have to say that I don't anymore want to go to study in US, and this is mostly because of US seems more and more like an police state.
Before you go on and start to tell me about your constitution and the freedom it guarantees, I just have to say that I know your constitution, and I really admire, but.. The big but is that even thought in paper you are the land of the free, in practise your freedoms are limited. You have a police force that uses force without hesitation, you have prosecutors that do anything to get a conviction be it right or wrong, and lastly it seems that most the citizens don't care about that because bad things don't happened to good people.
I should also add that in this case, and in previous cases in example the UCLA tasering of student, are just shocking. First of all, in Finland nor in other European countries, we don't have anything remotely like campus police that was in action here. We don't have armed police nor guards in our universities. Also when we have an very important person visiting, like in example an EU commissioner or minister, they may have their own body guard but definitely no police waiting for action.
It's just so weird to watch out how things are in US. I'm sorry, but as long as your country acts like an police state, I really wouldn't want to come there. I also hope that one day you get your act together and decide to go back and be reasonable again. I really hope that.
Just few notices...
Argentina and other countries who have run into trouble are not coerced by threating to cut trade to them. If a country doesn't pay it's debts or won't start to fix the problems of its economy as guided by the IMF and World Bank, they just won't get loans before they change their policies. That's not coercing, that's reasonable policy.
It should also be noted that Argentina wasn't first country in financial trouble. In example in the beginning of 90s Finland was hit by a deep depression in which GDP dropped 13% and unemployment rose from 3,5% to 18%. At the time Finland was very near bankruptcy and in the baddest days of the depression, leading politicians warned the people that if big changes were not made, then there would be no change but to give the country into guidance of IMF and World Bank. Those warnings eventually worked, changes were made, and after few years Finland emerged from the depression. In the case of Argentina, it seems that the leading politicians didn't do their job and citizens continued living in an illusion.
Actually both IMF and World Bank get money from their member countries, meaning basically that money comes directly from government budget or from coffers of central bank, that in any case means that the money comes eventually from private citizens. It should also be noted the US debt isn't that big a deal, the US public debt was 64,7% of GDP, which is not bad as in example Eurozone has 70,5% and whole European Union has 63,2%. Some countries like Belgia and Greece have their dept over 100% of GDP. So US situation is not that bad.
Well the short answer is that you have the worlds most powerful army that acts as the world police. The neat part of being world police is that commodities like oil is priced and public debt in US dollars, and as you own the printing presses to press more dollars, having public or trade deficit doesn't matter so much as you can just print more dollars. Also as the rest of the world uses US dollar to trade, the inflation that comes from printing more money is outsourced to the rest of the world.
As long as US dollar has its current status, the US can keep going on without big problems. However if European countries get their act together and decide to form a comparable force, meaning centralizing foreign and trace policies to Brussels and building an unified Euroarmy that can sent carrier groups to different parts of world to protect peace and democracy, then the status of US dollar could change. That unfortunately and fortunately won't probably happen in my life time as it seems that European countries really aren't that interested on building imperiums again, which is definitely a good thing. Of course the Chinese maybe willing to build an imperium but then again before 2030 or in late case 2050, they just won't have the economic muscle to challenge US dominance.
Argh, I just can't understand how some people can be so interested about anything concerning iPhone: I'm looking at you Slashdot editors, bloggers, telecom journalist etc.. The iPhone basically is just like the Ericsson R380s, but with newer components. Just look at the thing, it's very much like iPhone. Actually it follows same concept as the iPhone: it's completely locked down, so no addable software, and it was designated to mainly function with the network. According to a Swed who I had a pleasure to meet in a trip in Sweden, said Ericsson at the time of the phones introduction, in 2000, said that it wasn't a phone but an terminal.
If there are any engineers from Sony-Ericsson reading my comment, please for the love of god and everything that is good, bring back the R380s with modern technology. The P-series that Sony-Ericsson introduced afterwards is just rubbish when compared to R380. The R380s had the right form factor, it just felt right. Actually when reminiscing my memories of it, I actually took it from drawer, the phone functions still, except it's OS is unfortunately corrupted with out possibility to have a master reset via phone. :-( Does somebody have an advice on how to get it reset otherwise?
PS. Actually there is one big advance that the R380 had: as a Finn having the R380 and not a Nokia phone, you got instantly more friendlier reception, "oh you have an Ericsson, your mine friend!" ;-)
It seems that you don't understand how Nokia works. Nokias competitive advantage isn't design or superior technology, it's main competitive advantage is mass production of phones and phone models. Yes, Nokia doesn't just produce massive amounts of phones, it produces massive amounts of different phone models. The idea is simple, produce as many phone models as quickly as you can, and hope that at least few will be big hits and the others will just do.
It also seems that you really don't have a grasp of mobile phone markets. Nokia isn't just top at the moment, they have been for almost the last 10 years at the top. They currently have 37% market share globally. They are the most profitable mobile phone company not just now, but have been for the long time being. When we look at technology, production and marketing abilities, there really isn't any other phone company as Nokia.
On technology wise Symbian is the number one mobile OS. It was originally developed for the handhelds and has been powering them from the days of Psion. Most of the smart phones in the world are powered by Symbian and the platform has support not just from Nokia and Sony-Ericsson, but from other handset manufacturers also. As what comes to interface, yes the iPhone has a pretty interface which polished to death, but news flash, that same polishing can be found from the newer phones. Also it should be noted, it just isn't one interface Nokia is catering, they have Series 60, they are Series 40, they customize and try quite a lot. They may not be as innovative as Apple, but why be when they can just copy, imitate and mass produce.
As to your question about what happens when and if Apple will produce its low market version of iPhone, the answer to that one is easy: Nokia will just copy it, produce handful of new models, drop margins if needed for those phones and make sure that there is no way for Apple to succeed in the market. Actually I would argue that for now it's even impossible for Apple to try to gain any strong foothold from the markets, they have shown their cards are they are being copied and out imitated. It should also be noted that Apple isn't known to play in the mass production league, they are a company serving niche segments and are to do that with a bigger gross margin.
I would suggest that you take a visit to a Nokia NYCs Store or maybe visit their European pages to see on just what and how much they offer. Nokias European homepage
What? Where does this end. Repeat after me. Europe is not socialist. Europe is not in the state of socialism. Europe is not going to be socialist.
I'm sorry that I have to make this comment again, but I feel it's very important to point that Europe is not an example of socialism in action. The reason for this is that marking Europe as an example of socialism waters down the bad connotations associated to socialism and make it seem like that socialism really is an good alternative to market driven capitalism. No! Absolutely no. The Europe today, prosper and free, being one the power houses of global economy and politics wasn't build on socialism, it was build in foundation of democracy, market economy and social responsibility. Note! Being socially responsible doesn't equate to socialism.
If you want to see real socialism in action you go to North-Korea or get a time machine and jump back to eighties and visit Eastern Bloc countries and Soviet Union. They were socialist countries with socialist economies. If you had the opportunity, like I did, as an child to visit Soviet Union, all thought in the end of the eighties, you would see the real results of socialism: economy in ruins, rampant poverty and misery.
No. Please don't use Europe as an example of socialism, because it isn't an example of it. Capitalism with checks and balances isn't socialism.
---To comment the debate about SBC (AT&T) on their part with Telekom, I would say that is an perfect example on government having a bad effect to markets by making an bad decision. It should be noted however that I can understand the logic here, even in the US AT&T had a government mandated monopoly to long distance calls, and some have stated that without it, it wouldn't have been possible for US to build nation wide fiber optic network in the seventies to serve the whole nation.
Thought in the US there was adequate technology, capital and most importantly paying customers available, so it could have been probable that the US would had the nation wide fiber optic network even without AT&T doing the work. In South Africa it seems that there just weren't either enough paying customers to make it lucrative to build a nation wide network instead on engaging to monopolist practices geared towards profit optimization.
Also as in the same time the rest of the world, Europe including, were facing off government monopolies in telecommunication, the government decision to give an monopoly to a one company can be seen as a very very bad decision.
MS marketing department announced today in a bit to prove MS reputation as a socially conscious company a series of public service messages. The series includes as an example messages titled "Buying software is being American" and "Communists are evil terrorist". As an example on what to come, the MS public service team, previously known as the marketing, gave us a quick preview on one of their new public service messages. Here it comes!
"Hi, I'm sk0t. I'm a bad person and an convict. I wasn't always like this. My family was an all around good honest hard working church going your typical American family. My life was just good and I had all good things coming at me. Then one day it all changed. I met some new people over the Internet and as I were very naive back then, I trusted them and thought they were like me, loving god fearing persons,, but I was very wrong! They talked a lot about this thing called Linux and how it was better and more free than Windows. As then I was an freedom loving American I thought that having more freedom would be good, and listened them and tried this Linux. Oh boy, if I had known then what I know now, I newer would have done that. As soon as I started using Linux and listening more of these people, my life took an more deeper turn down to a hell. My family and friends tried to stop me, they intervened and read the holy bible to me, but it was too late, I was too deep in the world of sin, that there was no going back. No, the only way for me was down, down to become an dirty criminal stealing peoples hard earned work for my own pleasure. Finally my career as an professional criminal master mind became to an end, the police got me, and I was brought in front of the law to answer for my sins. I just crumbled then, my life flashed in front of me, I saw my family and all the good that god had gave me, and I saw all the harm and wrong I had done. I repented! I confessed my quilt and throed myself in mercy of justice. Luckily for me, the good judge saw that there was still some good in me. I did some time in jail, it was good, I deserved that. After jail time I was allowed to go back home. They even were so decent that they made me install Windows back to my computer. It feels so good. Every day when I'm using Windows, it feels like that I'm becoming a better person, and I feel that I'm liberated from my wicked ways. This is my story. I hope you have learned something from this and if you haven't I have just one thing to say: kids don't do jail, don't use Linux. Thank you for your time.
And next up we have a story about Slashdot readers having too much time in a friday.
Actually you need more engineers to lower or at least slow increases in salaries of engineers to keep US as an attractive place for engineering companies. The situation is that in the US engineers are paid very well compared to rest of the world or even when compared to other developed nations such as Japan, Germany, UK, etc.. This is the reason why many companies have outsourced so much of their engineering workforce to places like India and China, they are in search of cost savings. Thought it should be mentioned that my personal opinion is that in many cases outsourcing has also been motivated by the fad of outsourcing and incompetent management who don't understand engineering nor how to manage it.
In example here in Finland where collage and university education has been free for ages, the government has for long kept salaries of engineers in check by having relatively high intake in engineering schools. The idea is basically meet the demand, and by meeting the demand keep salaries of engineers in check in order to make Finnish engineering and industrial companies be more competitive. Actually one the reason why Nokia rose and became a leader in mobile communication is partly attributed to a fact that Nokia could afford having more engineers than it's competitors and thus had a competitive advance against it's competitors. Also as Nokia grew and other high tech industry sectors followed it and ITC sector became one of the main sectors of Finnish industry and economics, engineering salaries didn't grow as much as government increased intake in engineering schools even more. Actually the intake was increased so much that the intake amount was bigger than the number of students studying advanced math in high school. For this reason salaries in engineering didn't grow so much and they are still quite competitive against other countries which has lead to a situation where even as manufacturing of electronics has largely been moved, the engineering jobs are still here and the outsourcing fad that was in the world didn't hit Finland much.
It's a good question should the US try to get more students to study engineering or not, and what the cost of that operation can be. US has many world class companies and high tech engineering, i.e. example Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments and much more in fields of medicine, petrochemical, bio-engineering etc.. I really don't see those companies leaving the US as there just either isn't enough benefits to outsource or the political risk is too high, in example if Intel opened an chip manufacturing plant in China, they for sure their manufacturing techniques would be spied out in few years. Maybe having free tuition would put more people in fields of engineering, but then again it wouldn't change the underlying problem in the US which namely is low appreciation for science, math and engineering in general. Maybe a better solution and definitely cheaper, although a political suicide, would be to remove sports from the curriculum of US high schools. I just can't imagine how it's possible that in US so much importance is put to a schools football team nor all the hype surrounding it. At least this solution would in a greater time period start to repair the culture that is so much geared towards athletics and sports in general as the only thing that would be practiced in high school would be studying.
PS. About IBM and Lenovo. PC business now days is basically commodity business. To put a together a PC doesn't require much engineering as almost all the parts come from specialized suppliers and the PC manufacturers only functions are to put PCs together cheaply and effectively and then market them. As IBM is an engineering company and specialized to high-tech and solution provision it wasn't that large surprise that they sold, or in other words spinned out the PC making, as IBM was largely the active partner who created the deal largely and put out the financing for it.
You seem to forget that about half of the age class, after graduating from the 9th class of elementary school did choose a major, namely those that chose to go vocational or trade school. Actually you too did choose a major, that major just happened to be all-a-round preparation for collage or university.
It should also be noted that choosing vocational or trade school at the age of 16 isn't a decision that closes doors for the rest of your life. A friend of mine, that I first met when studying at University of Vaasa, at teenage didn't want to go to a high school and chose trade school. Later after graduating from trade school he wanted to more challenge and applied to Vaasa to study M.Sc.Econ and when doing that got interested about engineering, and after graduating from Vaasa continued at HUT (Helsinki University of Technology) to get a degree in engineering. So making a choice in young age doesn't mean that you can't progress in life.
Also it should be noted that to many students studying and academics are just not interesting. Many want to learn a profession, get a job, start a family, buy a house and get kids in early age and I have to say that there isn't anything wrong in this. If that half of my elementary school class that chose vocational or trade school had been forced to go to high school, they would have seriously puked at studying more and also in the process made sure that rest of us who wanted to study couldn't concentrate on studying.
In the end, the question isn't should teens choose their profession or career early on, but why not they shouldn't do it? I know myself many metal workers, cooks, secretaries, hair stylist etc.. that chose their profession early on and haven't had any regrets. They are proud of their professional skills and they like what they do. How is it so bad thing to let young people make a decision about their career in young age? They can always change what they do and go to study again, if they choose so.
I just can't understand what is so bad about alcohol testers and why so called old fashioned sobriety test would be better than that. At least here in Finland, and other parts of Europe too that I know, police use only alcohol testers and they are widely accepted and seen as the best way to get the job done. To me sobriety test seems just so very random way to measure is the driver under too much alcohol or not, I would image that with that kind of test a cop can use his/her judgment and either let the driver of the hook or book him, at least in the borderline cases. With testers its easy, you just blow and the tester will tell what your score is, and the score is what it is. And if for some instance you don't want to blow or you think that there is some wrong with the device or there are some other things to be noted, you can always demand to be taken to a local hospital for a blood test.
For the record, I think that BMI is too simplistic way to measure has a person bad life habits or not, and the judgment should be based on some other measurement.
On a note about athletes and them having BMI over 30, the question is not about are they now living good, it's about how are they going to live the next 10, 20 to 30 years. Usually the situation with persons BMI development is that once it goes up, it usually doesn't come down, at least not to the levels it someday was. So for in example we have a boxer now who has very high BMI, at the point where he/she stops training all that muscle weight will in very short time transform to regular fat weight. At least all the people I know who have been athletes and stopped their career, have turned into more or less having the same weight with less muscle and more fat. So from an insurers part there would be some case to asses persons insurance fees when they get over or under some points.
Then again, if we took this path and start to asses different things, then occupation, profession, living history and so on should be assessed too. Unfortunately I think that in this point of time, collecting, analyzing and processing that information would be too costly and the end result would be too unsure. Maybe this will happen in the future when our health and DNA are tracked via information systems throe our whole lifetime. Until then it can be debated does using some identifying techniques like BMI really benefit insurance company, individual insurance takers, individual health, national health and so on. This whole thing could also be just an get rich scheme from the part of the insurance company.
What is the news here? Red Hat is in the desktop market already, thought their offering is more geared or at least branded for the enterprise use: Red Hat Enteprise Linux 5 Desktop. It seems that they are just going to brand their Enterprise Desktop, add some multimedia and maybe a new colorful GNOME theme and call it Global Desktop Linux. Whoah!
The real news in here I would say is that Red Hat is gearing towards other than corporate customers. The question is, is this a defensive maneuver against Canonical or does Red Hat see that the consumer desktop linux market could be opening up? Or is it both? Could be both.
The second question, if they are not doing this purely for playing defense, is how serious they are? Are they so serious that they will maybe make a new multimedia player for Linux, or will they bundle in example iTunes or Real with it, or are they just going to hack up the usual suspects. I really would hope that they have something new to offer, as basically the situation is that multimedia support works but is not plea sent. Peasent here means the same as user experience with iTunes and in less extend Windows Media is.
ODF definitely has a future. The question isn't about that, it's about when ODF will come the mainstream choice in A) corporate environment and B) in home environment.
For me as software developer one thing hindering ODF adaptation is that there isn't or at least I don't know any APIs that allow me easily create ODF documents. As in example our application can export data to Excel in it's native format. We achieve this by using the excellent Java Excel API. We would add ODF support straight away if there would be same kind of API to create ODS documents. Also as ODS is open and not closed as Excel, there would be probably better support allowing full generation of a documents, i.e. generation of charts, this in fact would lead to a situation where we could add more "intelligence" to generated documents and benefit our users via added automation.
PS. I there is already an working API to generate ODF documents, then please reply and post link a to it.
PS2. Yes, I could also myself look onto ODF format specification and create my own code to generate documents, but as generating ODF documents at least in this time doesn't bring bacon home, and isn't even in the area of my expertise I just would like a ready to use code for it.
You don't need any classes, just go to a nightclub and start picking up women. In my experience trying to pickup a girl is the best way to learn social interactions. Basically when you are trying to pickup girls in a nightclub you learn 1) to identify and classify people who are potentially interested about you, 2) to learn on how to introduce yourself to a new person, 3) to read signs on are they interested or not and 4) to leave gracefully from a situation. The skills you learn this way help you in every other social situation too.
;-)
On a note about the general discussion about IQ and sex, in my own experience, I couldn't get sex nor girlfriend in high school because I just didn't know how to read body language and other signs on another person. Eventually when I turned 18 and went with friends to bar, I just tried to pick up girls failing of course miserably. Luckily after a year I got better and when I entered university there was no problem picking up or just socialising with other people.
PS. This is just the software development method applied to a real world. You run the code, crash it, find bug, fix it, and repeat the loop hundreds of times until you succeed. In real you literally repeat the loop hundreds of times before succeeding, but I think it's eventually worth it
No it's not. Venture Capital is not for basic research, it's for commercialization of already researched technology. If you don't put money for basic research, if you don't put it to high risk research, then you won't have any new technology that you can commercialize. And as I said, the US, Japanese, Chinese, Russians etc.. are already doing the same thing and thus it would be economical and industrial suicide to not do it.
As what comes to Europes economic growth and it's businesses, taxation or it's rate are not to be blamed. Yes, in some countries like German the tax laws are a mess, but all in all they are pretty workable. What does instead stifle businesses are work laws, or more on inflexibility in the job market: French and Germany come to a mind quick. If I would start from somewhere, it would changes to free job markets not stifle working government private sector partnership that does bring food on the table
This project is not waste of money nor is usually the normal R&D funds, benefits and grants given by the EU and member states. The money is intended to lower the risk on venturing into a totally new industry or on a new technology. Basically the idea is to put some public funding to encourage the private money to follow and get the ball running and as the ball keeps on rolling the society gets back it's initial funding via new firms, via new employment, via increased revenues and so on. These activities are very normal to any industrialized nation: Japanese developed their industries together with their government (Ministry of International Trade and Industry); the US is also heavily involved in funding new technology and industries via heavy R&D programs in the military; and the China and Russia all are doing the same thing. Compared to previous examples, the EU and members states fund too little new development, and that's a problem.
On a note I think that Theseus project will be very interesting and hopefully very rewarding. It's especially interesting as the main firms in it will be SAP and Siemens. SAPs systems are basically running in every major corporation and are responsible for lots of information handling. Siemens too has it's hands on very interesting technology, especially in industrial sectors. If by this project they technologies that allow SAP, Siemens and other vendors to get more information and make their systems more intelligent, the rewards to them and to the society would be quite large.
On a different note, a good example of how governments can help their booming corporations to succeeds can be found here from Finland. I would say that with out Finnish governments help by starting and guiding research projects, university programs, student intake, granting cheap development loans, reviewing tax laws and etc.. there wouldn't be such a enormous success as Nokia is today. That's just a one example. We need public money also, we do also need private money, but to keep up with the USA, Japan, China and other, we here in the Europe have to use public funding too to make sure European industries and firms will be successful in international competition.
True pro's leave work at morning after an all-nighter and go to sleep. Doh!
On a more serious note, those of us who have to interact with people and especially customers, pulling all-nighters and going bed at morning is not a viable option. I myself belong to this unfortunate group. I start my morning with a few cups of coffee, reading the local newspaper, checking news sites including Slashdot, reading emails and checking calendar and writing back emails. I would say that I spend every morning at least an hour or two doing this. There are few reasons for this mainly: 1) I want to do it, and 2) my brains just wont work good enough to do anything more complex.
On a note I would recommend this to all employees especially if the company you are working has free breakfast. Why spend the morning at home when you can just go to shower, put cloths and head to workplace to start your morning. This has the benefit that you can meet and connect with people in morning with less hassle as you are not disturbing their work.
This is bullshit anti-EU rhetoric. There is no EU directive that says "police can keep an secret list of sites and ip-address that they think are serving child pornography and police can give this list to the voluntary ISPs who will use the list to filter the Internet". NO NO NO, this all is the making of Swedish government. The blame rests entirely on the Swedish government and the culprits behind this attack against personal freedoms can be found from there.
God damn, there maybe many faults in EU, but don't make up lies to oppose it.
The image service is not TPB, it's a third party in this case. To give you an example: site A is doing something and site B gets the blame. Even so, if this accusation of image service hosting some content that is illegal, then the police should start an official inquiry on the subject, and if found evidence, charge the subject in a court of law. In this case police says that they might put TPB on list a child pornography filtering list, but they don't show any evidence or example that could be found from TPB, they are just making accusations with out backup.
On another note, if the police has evidence that TPB is hosting or linking to child pornography content, and they don't make an inquiry and press charges, they themselves are breaking the law as they are making a libel against TPB. So my message for the Swedish police is, put up or shut up.
This is the perfect example on why governments should never be given a blank cheque: they will eventually use it wrong.
Here in Finland we have the same system in place as the Swedish. The police keeps a secret list of sites and their ip-addresses that they claim serve child pornography, and the ISPs will use this list to filter these sites in voluntary basis. I would say in this case voluntary means "voluntary" as all ISPs are using the list to filter out content, and all though there is no law regarding this list and it's usage, it's still a form of government inflicted censorship as when this subject was in conversation, basically everybody that was against this system were pointed out to be supporters of child pornographers. In my mind the system in place in both Finland and Sweden are illegal and they are against our constitutions. It's just to bad that nobody has had the stand up and but the system and it's sponsor in court.
I think that the whole system is wrong, and definitely think putting TPB to it is very wrong, but then again if the Swedish police could be so stupid as to but TPB to the list, there would be some strong case for TPB to take the matter in to a court on basis of illegal government censorship. Even thought the government is not breaking the letters of the constitution they definitely are breaking the spirit of the constitution and the freedoms it grants.
Definitely I'm not happy the way things are there, but when choosing on supporting an dictatorship or not supporting it, the definitive choice is not to support it, when choosing between military operation and economic sanctions, the best choice is economic sanctions as it doesn't directly cost lives. If US would trade with Cuba and it's regime, it would the same as supporting it and thus allowing it to suppress it's people, especially as the said regime doesn't have any plans to start reforms on transforming itself to a democracy.
If you don't like your government, if you want the regime to go, my suggestion would for you to make a choice: either continue living like you do, or form a small group, take arms and take on the government. You may want to take some examples on Hungarian revolution in 1956, which unfortunately was suppressed by the Soviet Union. Hungarian revolution is a model on how quickly regimes can collapse. In case of Hungary it started from a small incident and left to country wide anger against the government and quickly lead to situation where citizens openly attacked pro-soviet communists and state police: basically storming in to a place and killing them at an instance. Actually better example would be Romanian revolution which lead to the collapse of the regime and execution of it's leader televised on national television. So things can happen and you can overthrow your government.
If not supporting dictatorships and wanting to do something to change them makes an person an asshole then I'm to proud to be one.
I agree that sanctions and trade embargoes cause regimes to be more anti-US, more aggressive and more violent, but the big thing here to remember is that as these regimes become more hostile they also become a lesser threat as their society, economy and industries are slowly strangled to death by cutting their ties to outside world. In example if trade would have continued normally with Iran and west after the Islamic revolution, Iran would probably now have many nuclear reactors, have had sooner all equipments and materials to make a nuclear bomb and have a better and more modernly equipped army thus being a bigger threat as it is now.
It should also be noted that sooner or later the people of a country that is in under sanctions and embargoes will rise up and revolt or the inner circle of government makes a coup d'etat and stops the activities that have put the country and it's people under suffering and misery. It may take longer time than sending few carrier groups and marines to the country, but it's still all in all cheaper and more safer method on destroying the regime.
All in all I think that sanctions and embargoes work. They also would work better if all industrialised countries where behind in them. In example of Cuba it's a pity that we Europeans trade with them. I'm sure that if Europe and Canada would now cut all ties to Cuba the regime would collapse in over night as the last breathing holes for the regime would be closed.
It seems that in Slashdot many people have some what strange idea on what socialism is and where they think that they are seeing it.
In socialism the people via government own and control the means of production. Communism is not alternative to socialism, but a way to enter socialism via armed struggle. Social democracy is an alternative way to achieve socialism by transforming the state peacefully into socialism step by step. In the world where we are living, there is no country that is practising socialism.
You said that countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark are socialist, that's dead wrong. The countries you cited are free capitalistic market economies. The only difference in Nordic and usually in European countries is that they have set up safety nets for their citizen: i.e. well-fare, public education and health-care etc.. Having these things doesn't make a country socialist, it makes it a well-fare state.
When we look at south America and especially what Chavez is doing to Venezuela, they are more or less committed on idea of national socialism: using the economy of a country and it's means of production to further national agendas and it's manifested destination. That is wrong and stupid. They are only going to wreck their economies and after they have used their national resources like oil and gas, their economies will crumble down. The only way to achieve prosperity is to invest in infrastructure, means of production and to abilities of citizens. Nordic countries nor Europe weren't build in a decade, the prosperity that we have and that takes care of welfare state is the product of hundreds of years work and investment into infrastructure and means of production.
I just downloaded Safari and although it's a nice looking and seemingly faster browser than Firefox and Internet Explorer, there are negative sides as well. I tested Safari with our web application and noticed that it didn't render text that was inside bold tags. Of course this is basically our own fault because our pages use XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and that standard doesn't have a bold tag. Then again this could be a good time to go over the code and fix it to more standard compatible.
:)
On a different note, after we have fixed our web application, I for one will be using Safari in all demonstrations. The Mac OSX look in buttons, text boxes and so on just adds that one thing to demonstration that makes our application to shine more.
PS. It would nice to hear if other people have had same kind of experiences with their net pages and web applications. If Safari has really dropped support for non-standard tags, this could explain quite much of its speed advantage.
There is no question would Europeans defend themselves or not, they would defend and the defensive warfare would be bitter. I myself, as all able Finnish men, have went to the army and been thought to fight against invading enemy. Officially Finland doesn't have any enemy, but in the army and past army, the one and only threat which against we have been thought to fight is Russia. If major war would break up with Russia, Finland would be the front-line country and we would be phasing the enemy first in pushing the invading force out of capital (Russians favor decapitating attack) and if that wouldn't work, Finnish forces would enter guerrilla warfare until western forces would drove invading force away. This is basically same in every European country. Even thought Europeans don't in every discussion jump to the guns and swear to fight until the death, that doesn't mean that they wouldn't. The reason why people go to army, why they are willing to bear arms and give their lives is that they have families, wife's and children, these are causes to fight.
As to question about can Europeans defend themselves, the answer is yes. As to question is there a combined European force, the answer is there is. Most of the EU member countries are part of NATO and their forces are part of it's command structure. Also countries that are EU members, but not NATO countries are very close to NATO and they have generally made sure that their armies are NATO compatible. So Europeans could and would defend themselves united via NATO structure. As to what comes to future and Russians preparation I would like to point out that they are already using a considerable high percentage of their GDP to army and raising it isn't probable or even wise, and it should also be pointed out that Russia's economic growth is totally depended on rising oil and gas prices not on major growth of their industrial base, so the Russian army that we see today is probably coming at it's peak. It should also be pointed out that even thought Russia does have high number of tanks, air-crafts and personnel, their forces are outdated and their technological sophistication is far from west. Also on a note, the usual Russian conscript isn't very motivated, they are treated like scum by their superiors and sacrificed with out no hesitation: they have no real motivation to die. If the push would come, there would be no doubt that Europe couldn't defend itself.
Also where do you get idea that European countries are bankrupt from social spending? Yes European countries spend quite much on in example public health-care, public education and public welfare, but these expenses also are paid in US and in other countries: the difference is that money just cycles through government and not directly from individual. It can be debated is it better to cycle the money via government or via private individuals. If there would be a need to spend more on defense, that could be done, that would mean cuts in some places, but not radical. I still would like to question the rational on Europe to spend much more to defense: Europeans already in combination spend half what US spends and quadruple what Russia and China spend, that is enough to keep Russian in line and US is our ally and will be in foreseeable future.
I also would like to know example on how Russian can threat us to submission? They would threat us with a nuclear holocaust? That would lead to same happening in Russia. They would threat us with invasion? From that moment they would have united Europe against them with all it's resources. They would threat to cut gas and oil? Their economy would collapse in the same moment.
You also should notice that international relationships aren't just between two, they are between everybody. If Russian would threaten Europe, US would defend it, and China would take advance on situation to take Siberia. If there is going to be a war, it will be world war and it will be a total war. For Russia to even think making an invasion, they would have plan how can the
What are you smoking?! I don't know what propaganda you have been reading, but Europe most certainly isn't a fat pig waiting for slaughter, it has real military muscle. You might want to read more about from Wikipedia under Military of European Union. In there you can see how much money is spend by member countries on their defense, and there is also a chart showing you how much money combined is spent in Europe compared to US, Russia and China. When EU members are spending over 250 billion dollars on their defense, half of US defense budget and quadruple to China and Russia, EU is for certain not a fat pig waiting for slaughter.
Also you really don't seem to understand how vital good economic base is to modern warfare. When we talk about economics we speak about country's industrial ability to produce war material and equipment and it's ability to finance the production. Now at peace time EU member countries are spending in average 1-2% of their GDP to defense, if there would be credible threat against well being of Europe, the defense budgets would immediately jump in par with US which is spending 4-5% of it's GDP to it's defense. So in layman's terms, what the economic base allows is massive production of Eurofigters and Leopards to defend Europe.
On a note UK and France in combination have 550 nuclear weapons which of course compared to US and Russia isn't much, but still represents a credible threat. It may not be enough to oblitariate US or Russia but it would for certain level down most of their infrastructure.
Maybe next time when you start speaking about Europe and it's defense, you should first look on facts and see that Europe isn't anymore just booty divided by US and Russia, but an independent world power in formation. In Europe many still remember all the horrible things of second world war and all the pain and suffering that was caused in the war, and thus see that Europe should not engage to wars in general and especially not build empires. What Europe is doing is building itself and spreading peace and prosperity to it's neighbours and other countries by increasing international trade and exchange and influencing governments of other countries by means of dialogue and diplomacy. Even though Europe nowadays seems more like house cat that just wants comfort for itself and others, it doesn't mean that it couldn't defend itself. Is it so horrible that one of the power houses of world chooses not to engage in world domination and empire building?