I've always wondered why Republican political figures such as Bush don't just tell the bible-pounders to go pound sand. It's not as if they're going to vote Democratic just to spite the administration, right?
It's not that they'd vote Democratic - it's that they might not vote at all. Karl Rover is very afraid that if the Christian Right doesn't have a high turn out at the next election, Bush could lose the close states.
It's like the Democrats with African American voters. It's not that African Americans will vote Republic. But they might stay home.
I find it amazing that despite 50 years of successful globalization, we still hear these moronic arguments against jobs moving overseas. After WWII, the US accounted for 50% of world GDP. Europe, Russia, and Japan were destroyed. South Korea, China, and Taiwan were agrarian. etc.
Since then, Europe and Japan have been rebuilt, and East Asia and India have greatly advanced technologically. America only accounts for 25% of world GDP today - but our standard of living is much higher.
This is not a zero-sum game, people. Yet every decade, we hear the same moronic complaints. People were worried about Japanese electronic goods. Then they were worried about Japanese cars. Then they were worried about cheap textiles from overseas. Then factories in Mexico. Steel dumping. etc. etc.
If these predictions had been correct, the United States would have a lower standard of living today than it did in 1945, and a higher unemployment. But the reverse is true - we have very low unemployment today, and a higher standard of living than ever before.
So suck it.
As for these jobs being "sweatshops" - please. The fact is that these countries have much worse capital infrastructures, so they need to work their labor much harder to make investment attractive. But it's not like it stays that way forever. Believe me, Taiwan and South Korea and China and India are far better off today after their sweatshop phases than they were before. Or, don't believe me, but believe the people of those countries - do you see the Chinese up in arms because their standard of living has doubled in the past 20 years? Why is it that the democratically elected government of India is moving away from socialism and trying to attract those "sweatshop" jobs? Why does South Korea have such a high standard of living today, if these are simply sweatshop jobs?
I also think it interesting to see how long before mp3 downloads become completely commoditized. But I'm not that concerned about the RIAA loosening up DRM - I just want a reasonable DRM standard that all mp3 vendors follow. I am really interested in buying mp3s online, and I'd be using iTMS already were it not for the fact that I don't want to be forced to use iTunes (and as a result buy from the iTMS) for the rest of my life because Apple uses a DRM scheme that is different from other vendors and that does not work with MusicMatch (or vice versa).
I don't have time to find the links right now, but this poll does not prove what it claims to. The most glaring problem with it was that they asked about certain "misperceptions" that a right-winger would tend to have, but not about "misperceptions" that a left-winger would tend to have.
For example, if I polled whether George W. Bush claimed that Iraq's WMDs were an imminent threat before the war, I bet a very high perception of NPR listeners would answer yes, while a very low percentage of Fox watchers would answer yes. Does that mean that Fox watchers are better informed across the board than NPR listeners? No. It just means that each has its blind spots.
God, I wasn't going to respond to this thread but now I've seen too people make the same mistake:
"What has that got to do with anything?...Free market place is a very very young concept...the free market place still has a thousand years to go before it proves its real worthieness."
Or from Lord Kholdan's post:
"yet the idea of free market is quite young. Adam Smith published Wealth of Nation in 1776. How do you explain all the innovations during the reneissance when merchantilism ruled? Or perhaps during the height of Greeks?"
What the original poster said was that the west embraced the "free marketplace of ideas." He is crediting western innovation to greater openness to different ideas.
I see no reason to doubt this analysis. The West took off when it began studying the ideas of the ancient greeks and romans, delivered to them through the Muslim world. The West also had a better environment in which ideas could spread, because the divisions (national and religious) within the Western world meant that an idea banned in one state could find a home in another (i.e., Marx was free to study in London).
By contrast, China completely shut itself off from the rest of the world in the 14th (or 15th?) century. And it was ruled by one centralized government. So its science and bureaucracy were very advanced - but it became stangnant, because any ideas that were radical could be easily shut down by the central government. Of course, radical ideas are often the ones that are most important.
Note that the original poster also made it a relative comparison. He didn't say that the West was totally open to new ideas and the rest totally closed. Obviously, the Church tried to shut up Galileo. But, relatively, the West has been much more open to new ideas.
Shit...you'd think a message board where everyone bitches about DMCA shutting down free speech, and "freedom as in speech," would understand the value of a marketplace of ideas. But I guess some people see the word "marketplace" and go apopleptic automatically.
The 5 computers thing is a restriction on the number of machines you can authorize to play DRMed music. You can share your own rips with as many on the local network as you like. You can also authorize a machine at work and copy your music there to play, but that's one less machine at home obviously.
I feel stupid, but could someone explains to me how this works? I've been interested in trying out the iTMS, but I want to understand it better first.
Ok, let's say I buy Radiohead's Creep off the iTMS. I download it initially on my home PC, and then copy it to my work PC.
How does iTunes know that it's on 2 machines? Does iTunes talk to Apple via the Internet the first time you play any AAC file you haven't played before on that machine? What if, at some point in the future, I've now gone to my third home PC and my third job. Does that mean I can never play that music on the third work PC? Is there a way I can tell Apple that I no longer need to listen to the music on the old machines, but need new machines authorized instead?
Also, is it true that no other players will play AAC? I am worried about this lock-in Ars Technica is talking about. Maybe I should wait til standards get set...
I presume that the reason the posted distinguished between American and Cuban hijackers is because Cubans cannot migrate legally, and therefore have to pursue illegal methods of leaving their own country. Whether this was an appropriate route is up to question, but at the very least, had they made it to America, the people who did not want to come along could have returned to Cuba of their free will. There's a big difference between that and hijacking a plane to, say, crash into buildings.
You know, I had two different problems with the "wealthy republican" statement:
It's hardly limited to Republicans. How do you think the Democrat Corzine became NJ governor?
In this particular case, Issa, the wealthy republican who spent the money to get the recall off the ground, has no chance in hell of becoming governor. So it's hardly that a wealthy republican bought the election. Hell, he may have ended up "buying" an election that replaces an unpopular Democrat (Davis) with a more popular one (Bustamante).
Could you provide some documentation that $30 billion of California's deficit was caused by Enron (or power-company shenanigans)? I've never heard that number, and it seems very high to me.
The US gave money to NGOs (humanitarian organizations) working in Afghanistan, not to the Taliban. Before 9/11, only 3 countries even recognized the Taliban, and the US was not one of them.
As for the UNOCAL pipeline myth, while it is true that there were such negotiations, they did not involve the US government, and occurred in 1999 - you know, before Bush was in power:
Jesus, people, try to check facts a little before you post, or mod.
The funny thing is, people were claiming that the war in Afghanistan was about oil, yet their only argument for that claim was that the US wanted this pipeline. Two years later, where's the pipeline?
Now people are claiming that the US invaded Iraq to get its oil. Yet oil production remains below pre-war levels, and the first shipment of oil did not go just to US firms, but was split with European firms as well (include France's TotalFinaElf).
"Better up the P4 clock rate to 5 GHz in the next 6 months and pray Joe Idiot still thinks it's faster"
If Joe Idiot thought that it would be faster, he'd probably be right. I think the important question is why do you assume that the Athlon 64 will automatically be faster than a P4 5GHz? What does "Joe Idiot," doing word processing and browsing the web, need a 64 bit CPU for? Is he creating massive databases?
Course, Joe Idiot doesn't need all the power of a 5GHz P4 either. But he should decide between the P4 and Athlon 64 based on price/performance for the applications he uses, not decide for the 64bit machine because you think it's cooler somehow.
Now there is simply no reason why you are worth 10 times more than the rest of the world.
While I think you have a valid point in your post, I do object to this - there is one very good reason why Americans are worth 10 times more than the rest of the world - because the economic capital (read: technological infrastructure/overal education level/economic rules) developed in the US is far greater than India's.
I don't think it's accurate to say that Americans got fat and lazy all of a sudden. Rather, it's that in 1980, American developers were (let's say) 20 times more productive than Indian developers, because the infrastructure in the US for computer development was (let's say) 40 times more developed than India's. Today, US developers still make 20 times as much, but are only 10 times as productive - because in that time, India has caught up in terms of computer education, internet infrastructure, etc.
No, this country needs educated, responsible citizens that understand the consequences (political, economic, and lives) of military action, and the will to look to alternate sources of information, now that the US media is owned by a few commercial military conglomerates.
Ah yes, clearly the problem is that anyone who supported the war is just stupid. It can't be they have different interpretations from you.
Let me pose you a question - do you understand the political consequences of the war? How about this one - everyone is convinced that the Muslim world in general, and the Arab world specifically, hates the US because it supports Israel, right? And good lefties like yourself believe that the US needs to create peace between Israel and Palestine to deal with this anger, right? Well then did you read today's New York Times?
The American defeat of Saddam Hussein played a central role, as Hamas sponsors in Syria and Iran came under new American pressure and Arab governments, including Saudi Arabia's, moved to calm the region. "After Sept. 11, the Palestinian resistance lost its international support," said Samir al-Mashharawi, a top official here of Mr. Abbas's mainstream Fatah faction. "After the Iraq war, the Palestinian resistance lost its Arab support."
So, war with Iraq helps make peace between Israel and Palestinians possible. Interesting, huh?
But for some reason, the mainstream media in the US has chosen to simply roll over and play dead for the government.
Jesus, why must everything be a conspiracy theory? When I read this article on the BBC (before Slashdot posted it), my first thought was, "Cool, but why the hell is this one of the BBC's top news stories?" I mean, ok, the government wants to build a fancy new bomber. And if it works it'll be big news, and if it goes into production it'll cost a lot of money. But Jesus, we have 22 years before we'll find out. It's nowhere near ANYTHING right now except for more research.
When the military researches body armor that can make soldiers stronger, it's also cool, but that wouldn't be on the BBC. This kind of stuff should be in Popular Science and the like, not the top news of the day. Believe me, there's a lot more important things going on today.
Indiana Jones is not a "James Bond" type that you just pass the reigns on to. Harrison Ford will always be Indiana Jones, plain and simple.
I hear what you are saying, but I would argue that James Bond is not a type that you can just pass the reigns on to either. None of the successors have come even close to having the charisma that Sean Connery did in the role. And without the incredible charisma (which is the same thing Harrison Ford provides to Indiana Jones), it's just a bunch of bad plots and gadgets...
I really can't understand why the author of this piece takes the SPEC numbers provided by Intel and Dell at face value, rather than investigating them in detail the way he has with Apple's; Those guys have certainly done as much twiddling to perform well on those tests as Apple has.
You're missing the point. He's not claiming that Apple's benchmarks on the new G5 aren't real. He's claiming that Apple tweaked the G5 but not the Dell.
There's anything wrong, with tweaking your system to get the most speed out of it. It's just unfair to compare a tweaked Mac to an untweaked PC. So what this author did was compare the tweaked Mac benchmarks (that Apple provides) to tweaked PC benchmarks (that Dell provides). Both benchmarks are legitimate and real. And this comparison is much more accurate than comparing a Mac with AltiVec enabled to a PC with SSE2 disabled, for example.
Everyone knows that any hardware/software manufacturer will "fudge" the benchmarks a bit.
That's true. But on the other hand, every hardware manufacturer doesn't get lead stories on Slashdot AND CNN (it's still on the front page as I post this, but yesterday it was one of the lead stories too) about how they've introduced the world's fastest personal computer. A misleading claim like that - debunked even before anyone gets their hands on their computer, just by reading the testing setup - deserves to be debunked, and is not simply a flamewar invitation.
Believe it or not, some of us want both a desktop UNIX on 64 bit hardware AND legitimate benchmarks. I don't see why one excuses the other.
Listen, Apple made a good product because they needed to stay in business. They didn't do it out of the good of their hearts. And their good product in no way changes the fact that I don't appreciate being lied to by corporations.
Don't get me wrong, this is not the world's biggest lie or corporate misdeed. I don't put much faith in benchmarks anyway, and I wouldn't make my decision between a Mac or a PC based on them (although for others the specs might be more important). But it's still sleazy. And it's very unfair to act like it's "ungrateful" or "trollish" to demand that Apple set up legitimate benchmarking tests.
It is unfair to summarize it that way. It's more like, "man examining available evidence" vs. "trolls with no evidence." Why is it trolling to show that Apple's benchmarks are wildly misleading? Would it also be trolling if I, say, posted to Slashdot evidence that nVidia was scamming certain graphic benchmarks?
Hell, how is this different from when Microsoft posted benchmarks about web server throughput on Windows vs. Linux? Then, all Slashdot was up in arms that Microsoft had heavily tweaked its Windows set up but left the Linux box plain vanilla. Why is it that when Apple does the same thing so many of us say "It's an Anti-Apple Troll"?
Jesus, the guy even says that there are things that he likes Mac for. How does that make him a troll?
It's interesting to wonder whether Linux will beat Apple. But I have to wonder if it's not more likely that Linux will beat Windows, with Apple remaining in second place.
Let me explain. I am a former Amiga and Mac user. I now use a Windows PC. When I bought my new computer, the most important factors in my decision were that it was cheaper than a Mac but easier to use (since I know Windows already) than Linux.
But imagine if Lindows computers expanded up the food chain a bit, and Linux expanded its desktop share some more. Now we have a world where you can get a pre-installed Linux PC that has good vendor support for less than a Windows PC costs, because you're not paying the Microsoft tax.
Would I then buy a Linux box? Very possibly. After all, at least in concept I much prefer using free software than being tied into a monopolist's offerings.
And I believe there are a lot of Windows users who use Windows because it's cheap and everywhere. But if Linux is cheaper and everywhere, and it's pre-installed on a wide range of PCs, then they might go Linux.
But in that scenario, Apple remains as is (because Mac users are willing to pay a premium for the overall Mac experience). In fact, to my mind, Apple's position is strengthed.
What's Apple's great advantage? That it controls both the hardware and software, and under Jobs' iron fist makes sure that everything works really, really well together. There are never any hassles, because the MacOS only has to support a very limited range of hardware and meet the exact range of user demands Jobs decides to meet, rather than being everything to everyone.
Now, if the great downside of Windows PCs now is that, because there are so many varieties of hardware/software, it's hard to get them to work flawlessly (so many conflicts/confusing issues), how much greater is that problem when, instead of a couple versions of Windows to deal with, there are the dozens of different Linux versions to work with?
Relatively, Apple's position is strengthened. Won't it be worth it for many people at that point to pay a premium to have Apple create a software/hardware package that spares them all those annoying incongruities of a Lintel PC?
Just a thought, explained poorly...hopefully you'll get the idea.
I don't know enough about Al Jazeera to know how good its reporting is. I suspect that it is quite un-objective when it comes to its reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
However, I do know that after the war the head of Al-Jazeera was forced out because he turned out to have been in the pay of the Iraqi government. And many Iraqis have complained that they will never watch Al-Jazeera again because it supported Hussein's regime and never talked about how bad it was.
And to imply that 'relevant' political force is determined by military strength alone is typically American thinking, and sorely misses the core lesson of 9-11 (namely that you don't need to spend 3% of your GDP on your military to inflict suffering on your enemies, nor will it prevent them from inflicting suffering on you).
Military strength is an important component of political force. It's not the only one, you're right. But the original poster's basic point was correct. Europe has very little military strength compared to the US, and even less willingness to use it. Europe has political power, but that political power wasn't enough to stop the US invading Iraq. Europe has economic power, but there's no way it would use it against the US, because that would be self-destructive of Europe's own economies. Therefore, Europe does not have the strength to stop American actions - GPS or no GPS.
The EU is growing rapidly, its population already exceeds that of the US, and it won't be long before its economic strength does too (if it doesn't already).
Actually, this isn't really true. Just in terms of population: Europe's population after WWII was twice the size of America's. Today, it is 50 million more. By 2050, America's will be bigger. As for economic growth, Germany is stagnating, and France isn't doing that great either. There's more to Europe than those countries - Spain is doing decently and the Czech Republic is growing well - but to have the two largest countries in Europe near a Japanese-style "lost decade" will severely hamper European growth.
The aging European population - much older than the American population (I don't have the exact stats, I know the Italy, for example, will have a median age 10 years older than America's median age by the year 2050) won't help Europe become a relevant power either.
Don't get me wrong - I think Europe is a great place to live. Great social welfare makes for a very good standard of living. And because of its foreign policy, Europe doesn't risk wars. But it's ability to project power is significantly limited as a result.
http://www.galun.com/misc/seasonal/2002/12/17-Moor e.html - Michael Moore is one of the sleaziest documentary makers/authors around. Almost nothing he says is true. I have to revise this article (that's my next project) because more falsehoods in the movie have been discovered since I wrote it.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always wondered why Republican political figures such as Bush don't just tell the bible-pounders to go pound sand. It's not as if they're going to vote Democratic just to spite the administration, right?
It's not that they'd vote Democratic - it's that they might not vote at all. Karl Rover is very afraid that if the Christian Right doesn't have a high turn out at the next election, Bush could lose the close states.
It's like the Democrats with African American voters. It's not that African Americans will vote Republic. But they might stay home.
I find it amazing that despite 50 years of successful globalization, we still hear these moronic arguments against jobs moving overseas. After WWII, the US accounted for 50% of world GDP. Europe, Russia, and Japan were destroyed. South Korea, China, and Taiwan were agrarian. etc.
Since then, Europe and Japan have been rebuilt, and East Asia and India have greatly advanced technologically. America only accounts for 25% of world GDP today - but our standard of living is much higher.
This is not a zero-sum game, people. Yet every decade, we hear the same moronic complaints. People were worried about Japanese electronic goods. Then they were worried about Japanese cars. Then they were worried about cheap textiles from overseas. Then factories in Mexico. Steel dumping. etc. etc.
If these predictions had been correct, the United States would have a lower standard of living today than it did in 1945, and a higher unemployment. But the reverse is true - we have very low unemployment today, and a higher standard of living than ever before.
So suck it.
As for these jobs being "sweatshops" - please. The fact is that these countries have much worse capital infrastructures, so they need to work their labor much harder to make investment attractive. But it's not like it stays that way forever. Believe me, Taiwan and South Korea and China and India are far better off today after their sweatshop phases than they were before. Or, don't believe me, but believe the people of those countries - do you see the Chinese up in arms because their standard of living has doubled in the past 20 years? Why is it that the democratically elected government of India is moving away from socialism and trying to attract those "sweatshop" jobs? Why does South Korea have such a high standard of living today, if these are simply sweatshop jobs?
Gimme a break.
I also think it interesting to see how long before mp3 downloads become completely commoditized. But I'm not that concerned about the RIAA loosening up DRM - I just want a reasonable DRM standard that all mp3 vendors follow. I am really interested in buying mp3s online, and I'd be using iTMS already were it not for the fact that I don't want to be forced to use iTunes (and as a result buy from the iTMS) for the rest of my life because Apple uses a DRM scheme that is different from other vendors and that does not work with MusicMatch (or vice versa).
I don't have time to find the links right now, but this poll does not prove what it claims to. The most glaring problem with it was that they asked about certain "misperceptions" that a right-winger would tend to have, but not about "misperceptions" that a left-winger would tend to have.
For example, if I polled whether George W. Bush claimed that Iraq's WMDs were an imminent threat before the war, I bet a very high perception of NPR listeners would answer yes, while a very low percentage of Fox watchers would answer yes. Does that mean that Fox watchers are better informed across the board than NPR listeners? No. It just means that each has its blind spots.
God, I wasn't going to respond to this thread but now I've seen too people make the same mistake:
"What has that got to do with anything?...Free market place is a very very young concept...the free market place still has a thousand years to go before it proves its real worthieness."
Or from Lord Kholdan's post:
"yet the idea of free market is quite young. Adam Smith published Wealth of Nation in 1776. How do you explain all the innovations during the reneissance when merchantilism ruled? Or perhaps during the height of Greeks?"
What the original poster said was that the west embraced the "free marketplace of ideas." He is crediting western innovation to greater openness to different ideas.
I see no reason to doubt this analysis. The West took off when it began studying the ideas of the ancient greeks and romans, delivered to them through the Muslim world. The West also had a better environment in which ideas could spread, because the divisions (national and religious) within the Western world meant that an idea banned in one state could find a home in another (i.e., Marx was free to study in London).
By contrast, China completely shut itself off from the rest of the world in the 14th (or 15th?) century. And it was ruled by one centralized government. So its science and bureaucracy were very advanced - but it became stangnant, because any ideas that were radical could be easily shut down by the central government. Of course, radical ideas are often the ones that are most important.
Note that the original poster also made it a relative comparison. He didn't say that the West was totally open to new ideas and the rest totally closed. Obviously, the Church tried to shut up Galileo. But, relatively, the West has been much more open to new ideas.
Shit...you'd think a message board where everyone bitches about DMCA shutting down free speech, and "freedom as in speech," would understand the value of a marketplace of ideas. But I guess some people see the word "marketplace" and go apopleptic automatically.
The 5 computers thing is a restriction on the number of machines you can authorize to play DRMed music. You can share your own rips with as many on the local network as you like. You can also authorize a machine at work and copy your music there to play, but that's one less machine at home obviously.
I feel stupid, but could someone explains to me how this works? I've been interested in trying out the iTMS, but I want to understand it better first.
Ok, let's say I buy Radiohead's Creep off the iTMS. I download it initially on my home PC, and then copy it to my work PC.
How does iTunes know that it's on 2 machines? Does iTunes talk to Apple via the Internet the first time you play any AAC file you haven't played before on that machine? What if, at some point in the future, I've now gone to my third home PC and my third job. Does that mean I can never play that music on the third work PC? Is there a way I can tell Apple that I no longer need to listen to the music on the old machines, but need new machines authorized instead?
Also, is it true that no other players will play AAC? I am worried about this lock-in Ars Technica is talking about. Maybe I should wait til standards get set...
Thanks for any responses!
I presume that the reason the posted distinguished between American and Cuban hijackers is because Cubans cannot migrate legally, and therefore have to pursue illegal methods of leaving their own country. Whether this was an appropriate route is up to question, but at the very least, had they made it to America, the people who did not want to come along could have returned to Cuba of their free will. There's a big difference between that and hijacking a plane to, say, crash into buildings.
It's hardly limited to Republicans. How do you think the Democrat Corzine became NJ governor?
In this particular case, Issa, the wealthy republican who spent the money to get the recall off the ground, has no chance in hell of becoming governor. So it's hardly that a wealthy republican bought the election. Hell, he may have ended up "buying" an election that replaces an unpopular Democrat (Davis) with a more popular one (Bustamante).
For example, we've yet to have a female president. Ergo, the odds of the first female candidate to win the presidency are pretty slim.
You're missing a step here. Your logic appears to be "No woman has won, therefore the first one to run won't win either." That's pretty faulty logic.
Could you provide some documentation that $30 billion of California's deficit was caused by Enron (or power-company shenanigans)? I've never heard that number, and it seems very high to me.
It is a well-debunked myth that the US gave money to the Taliban before 9/11. See, for example:
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20011008.html
The US gave money to NGOs (humanitarian organizations) working in Afghanistan, not to the Taliban. Before 9/11, only 3 countries even recognized the Taliban, and the US was not one of them.
As for the UNOCAL pipeline myth, while it is true that there were such negotiations, they did not involve the US government, and occurred in 1999 - you know, before Bush was in power:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1984459.stm
Jesus, people, try to check facts a little before you post, or mod.
The funny thing is, people were claiming that the war in Afghanistan was about oil, yet their only argument for that claim was that the US wanted this pipeline. Two years later, where's the pipeline?
Now people are claiming that the US invaded Iraq to get its oil. Yet oil production remains below pre-war levels, and the first shipment of oil did not go just to US firms, but was split with European firms as well (include France's TotalFinaElf).
"Better up the P4 clock rate to 5 GHz in the next 6 months and pray Joe Idiot still thinks it's faster"
If Joe Idiot thought that it would be faster, he'd probably be right. I think the important question is why do you assume that the Athlon 64 will automatically be faster than a P4 5GHz? What does "Joe Idiot," doing word processing and browsing the web, need a 64 bit CPU for? Is he creating massive databases?
Course, Joe Idiot doesn't need all the power of a 5GHz P4 either. But he should decide between the P4 and Athlon 64 based on price/performance for the applications he uses, not decide for the 64bit machine because you think it's cooler somehow.
Now there is simply no reason why you are worth 10 times more than the rest of the world.
While I think you have a valid point in your post, I do object to this - there is one very good reason why Americans are worth 10 times more than the rest of the world - because the economic capital (read: technological infrastructure/overal education level/economic rules) developed in the US is far greater than India's.
I don't think it's accurate to say that Americans got fat and lazy all of a sudden. Rather, it's that in 1980, American developers were (let's say) 20 times more productive than Indian developers, because the infrastructure in the US for computer development was (let's say) 40 times more developed than India's. Today, US developers still make 20 times as much, but are only 10 times as productive - because in that time, India has caught up in terms of computer education, internet infrastructure, etc.
The numbers are made up, but you get the idea.
No, this country needs educated, responsible citizens that understand the consequences (political, economic, and lives) of military action, and the will to look to alternate sources of information, now that the US media is owned by a few commercial military conglomerates.
Ah yes, clearly the problem is that anyone who supported the war is just stupid. It can't be they have different interpretations from you.
Let me pose you a question - do you understand the political consequences of the war? How about this one - everyone is convinced that the Muslim world in general, and the Arab world specifically, hates the US because it supports Israel, right? And good lefties like yourself believe that the US needs to create peace between Israel and Palestine to deal with this anger, right? Well then did you read today's New York Times?
The American defeat of Saddam Hussein played a central role, as Hamas sponsors in Syria and Iran came under new American pressure and Arab governments, including Saudi Arabia's, moved to calm the region. "After Sept. 11, the Palestinian resistance lost its international support," said Samir al-Mashharawi, a top official here of Mr. Abbas's mainstream Fatah faction. "After the Iraq war, the Palestinian resistance lost its Arab support."
So, war with Iraq helps make peace between Israel and Palestinians possible. Interesting, huh?
But for some reason, the mainstream media in the US has chosen to simply roll over and play dead for the government.
Jesus, why must everything be a conspiracy theory? When I read this article on the BBC (before Slashdot posted it), my first thought was, "Cool, but why the hell is this one of the BBC's top news stories?" I mean, ok, the government wants to build a fancy new bomber. And if it works it'll be big news, and if it goes into production it'll cost a lot of money. But Jesus, we have 22 years before we'll find out. It's nowhere near ANYTHING right now except for more research.
When the military researches body armor that can make soldiers stronger, it's also cool, but that wouldn't be on the BBC. This kind of stuff should be in Popular Science and the like, not the top news of the day. Believe me, there's a lot more important things going on today.
Indiana Jones is not a "James Bond" type that you just pass the reigns on to. Harrison Ford will always be Indiana Jones, plain and simple.
I hear what you are saying, but I would argue that James Bond is not a type that you can just pass the reigns on to either. None of the successors have come even close to having the charisma that Sean Connery did in the role. And without the incredible charisma (which is the same thing Harrison Ford provides to Indiana Jones), it's just a bunch of bad plots and gadgets...
Just my two cents.
I really can't understand why the author of this piece takes the SPEC numbers provided by Intel and Dell at face value, rather than investigating them in detail the way he has with Apple's; Those guys have certainly done as much twiddling to perform well on those tests as Apple has.
You're missing the point. He's not claiming that Apple's benchmarks on the new G5 aren't real. He's claiming that Apple tweaked the G5 but not the Dell.
There's anything wrong, with tweaking your system to get the most speed out of it. It's just unfair to compare a tweaked Mac to an untweaked PC. So what this author did was compare the tweaked Mac benchmarks (that Apple provides) to tweaked PC benchmarks (that Dell provides). Both benchmarks are legitimate and real. And this comparison is much more accurate than comparing a Mac with AltiVec enabled to a PC with SSE2 disabled, for example.
Everyone knows that any hardware/software manufacturer will "fudge" the benchmarks a bit.
That's true. But on the other hand, every hardware manufacturer doesn't get lead stories on Slashdot AND CNN (it's still on the front page as I post this, but yesterday it was one of the lead stories too) about how they've introduced the world's fastest personal computer. A misleading claim like that - debunked even before anyone gets their hands on their computer, just by reading the testing setup - deserves to be debunked, and is not simply a flamewar invitation.
Believe it or not, some of us want both a desktop UNIX on 64 bit hardware AND legitimate benchmarks. I don't see why one excuses the other.
Listen, Apple made a good product because they needed to stay in business. They didn't do it out of the good of their hearts. And their good product in no way changes the fact that I don't appreciate being lied to by corporations.
Don't get me wrong, this is not the world's biggest lie or corporate misdeed. I don't put much faith in benchmarks anyway, and I wouldn't make my decision between a Mac or a PC based on them (although for others the specs might be more important). But it's still sleazy. And it's very unfair to act like it's "ungrateful" or "trollish" to demand that Apple set up legitimate benchmarking tests.
It is unfair to summarize it that way. It's more like, "man examining available evidence" vs. "trolls with no evidence." Why is it trolling to show that Apple's benchmarks are wildly misleading? Would it also be trolling if I, say, posted to Slashdot evidence that nVidia was scamming certain graphic benchmarks?
Hell, how is this different from when Microsoft posted benchmarks about web server throughput on Windows vs. Linux? Then, all Slashdot was up in arms that Microsoft had heavily tweaked its Windows set up but left the Linux box plain vanilla. Why is it that when Apple does the same thing so many of us say "It's an Anti-Apple Troll"?
Jesus, the guy even says that there are things that he likes Mac for. How does that make him a troll?
It's interesting to wonder whether Linux will beat Apple. But I have to wonder if it's not more likely that Linux will beat Windows, with Apple remaining in second place.
Let me explain. I am a former Amiga and Mac user. I now use a Windows PC. When I bought my new computer, the most important factors in my decision were that it was cheaper than a Mac but easier to use (since I know Windows already) than Linux.
But imagine if Lindows computers expanded up the food chain a bit, and Linux expanded its desktop share some more. Now we have a world where you can get a pre-installed Linux PC that has good vendor support for less than a Windows PC costs, because you're not paying the Microsoft tax.
Would I then buy a Linux box? Very possibly. After all, at least in concept I much prefer using free software than being tied into a monopolist's offerings.
And I believe there are a lot of Windows users who use Windows because it's cheap and everywhere. But if Linux is cheaper and everywhere, and it's pre-installed on a wide range of PCs, then they might go Linux.
But in that scenario, Apple remains as is (because Mac users are willing to pay a premium for the overall Mac experience). In fact, to my mind, Apple's position is strengthed.
What's Apple's great advantage? That it controls both the hardware and software, and under Jobs' iron fist makes sure that everything works really, really well together. There are never any hassles, because the MacOS only has to support a very limited range of hardware and meet the exact range of user demands Jobs decides to meet, rather than being everything to everyone.
Now, if the great downside of Windows PCs now is that, because there are so many varieties of hardware/software, it's hard to get them to work flawlessly (so many conflicts/confusing issues), how much greater is that problem when, instead of a couple versions of Windows to deal with, there are the dozens of different Linux versions to work with?
Relatively, Apple's position is strengthened. Won't it be worth it for many people at that point to pay a premium to have Apple create a software/hardware package that spares them all those annoying incongruities of a Lintel PC?
Just a thought, explained poorly...hopefully you'll get the idea.
I don't know enough about Al Jazeera to know how good its reporting is. I suspect that it is quite un-objective when it comes to its reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
However, I do know that after the war the head of Al-Jazeera was forced out because he turned out to have been in the pay of the Iraqi government. And many Iraqis have complained that they will never watch Al-Jazeera again because it supported Hussein's regime and never talked about how bad it was.
It's not illegal to have a big convention where people can talk about whatever they like.
It would be illegal, on the other hand, to have a convention specifically dedicated to people trading tips to murder to their neighbors.
Intent does matter.
And to imply that 'relevant' political force is determined by military strength alone is typically American thinking, and sorely misses the core lesson of 9-11 (namely that you don't need to spend 3% of your GDP on your military to inflict suffering on your enemies, nor will it prevent them from inflicting suffering on you).
Military strength is an important component of political force. It's not the only one, you're right. But the original poster's basic point was correct. Europe has very little military strength compared to the US, and even less willingness to use it. Europe has political power, but that political power wasn't enough to stop the US invading Iraq. Europe has economic power, but there's no way it would use it against the US, because that would be self-destructive of Europe's own economies. Therefore, Europe does not have the strength to stop American actions - GPS or no GPS.
The EU is growing rapidly, its population already exceeds that of the US, and it won't be long before its economic strength does too (if it doesn't already).
Actually, this isn't really true. Just in terms of population: Europe's population after WWII was twice the size of America's. Today, it is 50 million more. By 2050, America's will be bigger. As for economic growth, Germany is stagnating, and France isn't doing that great either. There's more to Europe than those countries - Spain is doing decently and the Czech Republic is growing well - but to have the two largest countries in Europe near a Japanese-style "lost decade" will severely hamper European growth.
The aging European population - much older than the American population (I don't have the exact stats, I know the Italy, for example, will have a median age 10 years older than America's median age by the year 2050) won't help Europe become a relevant power either.
Don't get me wrong - I think Europe is a great place to live. Great social welfare makes for a very good standard of living. And because of its foreign policy, Europe doesn't risk wars. But it's ability to project power is significantly limited as a result.
http://www.galun.com/misc/seasonal/2002/12/17-Moor e.html - Michael Moore is one of the sleaziest documentary makers/authors around. Almost nothing he says is true. I have to revise this article (that's my next project) because more falsehoods in the movie have been discovered since I wrote it.