Strictly speaking it is true - what we have in major western democracies except maybe Switzerland is an authoritarian regime which however has some strong feedback features which usually prevent it from making too many a mistake. The rest i.e. social systems, organisation of economy based on private property, common army and structured legal system in which it all operates - these are all part of the way society is organized and what ancient greeks did not have in that form. The ideas about control over the ruling bodies in which our chosen MPs represent us in some far off place (Berlin or Brussels for me) is taken from the ancient times and fitted into what was possible 150 - 200 years ago - we can change it now if we want but we need to discuss it and I think that is the biggest advantage that we have - I cannot imagine even the bureaucrats in NK's gov. doing it i.e. discussing issues openly.
OK changing things in so called western democracies is not easy - we can see how one corrupt entrepreneur could buy himself the way out of trouble and straight into PM sit - Italy is one such example. Still we have systems based on democracy even if not perfect one.
Authoritarian regimes that recognize that capitalism is just a tool and needs state control are usually well off still less effective than open societies are. Claiming that communism works however is just in odds with reality. The reason for their demise in central and eastern E. was simply that they tried to control everything which fails of course and even worse make your state falling apart eventually. OC they can try and succeed in keeping control for prolonged period of time but this works only so long and falls into pieces as soon as the top weakens. Open societies have a problem with making any decision at all but they are still effective enough to use advantages of openness and that is something NK will never have.
OC question is what will happen when the regime falls - I guess we will see another one raising from the ashes hopefully without major blood spill.
I suppose we should see it as a positive thing as having nuclear weapons is a major cost factor for them and does not feed their people which means that at some point they either starve to death or revolt.
OC one may argue that if we cannot or do not want to do anything about it except using strong (in diplomatic terms) language then we may just as well accept that the psychopathic rulers of NK have the nukes. Or we may consider the question - for instance if that nuclear deterrent really works - do you really think that they would have any problems in nuking part of own country if they saw their control dissolving there? What about seeing and hearing voices paranoid rulers tend to have problems with? What about the nukes when the regime eventually falls apart - possibly in an outburst of violence? is it still a good idea? Do you think deterrence still works in such conditions? OC it still may - but I would not bet on it.
So in reality we should be ready for the worst. If that is so maybe we should just do annihilate their sorry state while this still does not cause overall nuclear carnage?
I think this is false dichotomy - some jobs are relatively standard (at least for the particular designer) and this means you can just sit and code. Some jobs are impossible to be done this way - you have to draw sketches and think about ways to do things. Interestingly you can also do that by coding only you cannot expect that these first sketches will be right but rather prototypes or experiments if you will.
Whether management has understanding for such practices is another thing - in corporation I once worked there were signs on walls to the tune: 'first time right' or 'our goal is faultless software'. Alas all other corporations I had a chance to work for had similar slogans - sometimes I wonder how much they pay somebody for developing of those. Sometimes I think good products are made in spite of 'good' management practice...
Even if made for a joke "where's George" helps model spread of disease so such data may be useful albeit not the way one may think. Whether tweeter can be used similar way I am not sure - I would think that site is just to fluffy for such purpose but maybe not.
Oh so it is a housing and mortgage that are problematic now? I mean any credit can default and if there is enough defaulted credits there is no system in the world that can sustain damage. There is another problem of course that all the financial products similar to insurance where not following any rules that are forced upon real insurance companies making it impossible to pay in case things go wrong as they seem to do. And then there is another problem that greenback is thought to be world currency and holds to its value although it should not - not with such deficit that US has. Now it works all well as long as holders of dollar denominated reserves believe they have value but it paralyzes the system as the holders are scared shitless to move their dollars and so the gov starts to print big time. Until dollar loses some value the economy will not pick up and this does not happen until dollar falls. I suppose all other problems being big and nasty are just a side effect of the inbalance in US-world relationship where US was allowed to buy products so cheap that their production became unprofitable everywhere else except China etc. The problem became so big that even economy as big as german went down with it. One of the reasons why dollar holds value against other currencies is that countries that still produce anything have no transparent financial markets and governments that all to readily take their money, so even if dollar is not as good as it once was it is still better bet than to live your account in say China. Paradoxically excellence of US and UK financial system breaks the system by itself. It is mind boggling and yet it seems that this was unavoidable as the structures that brought down the system were the same as the ones that made it working in the first place. To see it from another angle the system if left alone will go bananas as it did. Too much freedom for one component (finance) while others have to follow constraints of physical entities is apparently bad. Who might have thought. I only hope that the return to economical normality will not take another WW.
all these analogies are flawed which can be seen if you think for a while what you purchase and how it is delivered. In some countries in EU it is much easier because to deregulate the utilities market authorities require the producers and the grid owners to be different entities and the price at the end consist in principle of two parts: grid usage fee and pay per unit of delievered utility. There is of course another aspect of this - utilities are common goods i.e. things that we all need. If there is no difference whether you use little or a lot people have no motivation for being reasonable and some are not. If the bandwith limitation that is caused by extreme usage by some causes then deterioration of service for everybody else then it is only reasonable to introduce progressive fees. They do not have to be drastic but I think they can have few thresholds. When the users are informed and the limits are set properly this should not be such a big deal me thinks.
I suppose ensuring that US military uses only US made equipment may decrease their fighting ability unless you consider 'designed & engineered in US' as good enough approximation of 'made in USA'?
I think before you start digging into who designed and made what and whether that is important for national security one should think about what constitutes a superior military power. Not only ability to produce better (usually more expensive) equipment but also ways of using it and ideology driving and motivating your people, the size of force and ability to sustain war effort for long enough time.
If comparing to your opponents your resources are not good enough than you do not start the war. From this perspective it is not really that relevant where your military toys were made if you have enough of them and if they work. Georgian president did not make any of these calculations last year and see what happened with him and his country.
Some energy may actually be saved (or used differently): after all the producers are not as dumb as they are presenting themselves and they will decrease their power stations output if new usage pattern (with lots of PCs being turned off at night) actually persists. In other words - difficulty in adjusting to power consumption within seconds does not mean that it cannot be/is not done at longer intervals.
This can be incompetence or maybe the market situation today does not provide money for such DBs? Whether this is the end of certain business model or not is another matter but in their case it seems to be.
What interests me here however is why single out Germany, UK and US? What is so different there?
NEVER is a strong word. It seems there are limits what current business models can do and what you seem to like so much i.e. fee free service may not be feasible in nearest future due to the fact that advertising revenue is not there.
There has been an article on Economist website about the end of the free lunch. The article itself is rather simplistic but what can you expect from economists - anybody that reads news recently should know that they ain't that smart either. They maybe onto something though - majority of web services will need some other revenue than advertising or it will collapse. Whether this eliminates the whole business model I doubt but we are going to see anyway.
There is also another aspect of this cross jumping - some of the highly educated suck big time as engineers. I do not know why is it so but I met quite some of well educated people some of them very intelligent and they still were able to screw things big time and get arrogant if pointed to the miserable results. OTOH some ex-truck drivers were good enough to get to the architects group in a company I once worked for. I think what you say about interviews is important. Getting to this stage is not easy however and will take a lot of stamina and luck.
This is one of the subjects a good/.er has a strong but rather uninformed opinion and it is meant to be this way, thus you do not really expect anybody here to read referred article in wikipedia, do you?
If my corporation buys services from global player say HP for instance and this in turn gives away whatever flavour linux they currently support then how this is going to cause money staying locally? I mean HP service desks are all over the place and their HQ is thousands KMs away so the money is flowing around or away but not staying?
Whether windows actually dies is another matter. I think this will not happen or not very soon anyway. All predictions about fast adoption of linux because of it being cheaper have not come true partially because corporate service boys charged a healthy premiums on their linux 'loving' customers. I had problems with that myself too - I had to justify to my box why I wanted to use more expensive product and it was linux that was more expensive than vista installation. The price tags have been set by our IT service support company. If I could install linux box myself of course this would be cheaper but than again maybe against corporate policy too. OC when it comes to small business that is able to make decision and switch within days of making it then this OS switch actually may happen. Alas not everywhere and for everybody. which is good - we need no mono-culture.
I for one am trying to reverse the trend or kind of. In my corporation R&D (generally called engineers) can ask for different OS boxes depending on what they think is more feasible. Due to administrative restrictions connected with use of linux box I have just decided to switch to vista (and run linux in vm instead).
On more serious note - Look deep into your soul (if you have one) and honestly answer the question: why do you not like the idea of Linux being wide spread. Chances are that biggest (and possible one and only) reason is that feeling of exclusivity - being a geek and all - suddenly going away as almost everybody will now get exposed to linux this or the other way. I think it is a good thing not because I like linux but because if all OSes become normal then decisions will be made for a change on merits instead of propaganda and prejudice.
Forgot this so here I am coming again: Here in EU tax authorities do not have to have a warrant to investigate tax evasion case and eavesdrop your communications. Moreover the 'innocent until proven guilty' never applied to tax matters at leas in Germany it did not - if you facing tax court (Finanzhof) you have to prove your innocence or you will be found guilty. Sounds fair does it not?
What ever happened to freedom, the right to privacy, search warrants, due process and innocent until proven guilty ?
The answer is: they are all gone, maybe not all completely and at once but that is a good start.
Of course that is all to fight the corruption, money laundering and possibly even terrorism. I wonder why world peace and cancer do not stand on the list of things that should be gone when and if the bank secrecy and so called tax heavens are not there anymore.
I am not sure how it looks like now but few years back I was using dutch railways on regular basis and indeed they were pretty good, much better than Deutsche Bahn. They even paid for taxi to deliver me home when the train had to be stopped for few hours due to tracks problems and due to late hour there have been no other transport means available anymore. I have not seen such service anywhere else. UK trains OTOH are a class for themselves and a disaster and a shame too.
If you want to discuss public transport systems I think you should take UK out of the equation because the country does not have anything that can be called that.
Slashdot Mirror
more of this can be seen here
OK changing things in so called western democracies is not easy - we can see how one corrupt entrepreneur could buy himself the way out of trouble and straight into PM sit - Italy is one such example. Still we have systems based on democracy even if not perfect one.
Wants a change - try this for instance
Authoritarian regimes that recognize that capitalism is just a tool and needs state control are usually well off still less effective than open societies are. Claiming that communism works however is just in odds with reality. The reason for their demise in central and eastern E. was simply that they tried to control everything which fails of course and even worse make your state falling apart eventually. OC they can try and succeed in keeping control for prolonged period of time but this works only so long and falls into pieces as soon as the top weakens. Open societies have a problem with making any decision at all but they are still effective enough to use advantages of openness and that is something NK will never have.
OC question is what will happen when the regime falls - I guess we will see another one raising from the ashes hopefully without major blood spill.
I suppose we should see it as a positive thing as having nuclear weapons is a major cost factor for them and does not feed their people which means that at some point they either starve to death or revolt. OC one may argue that if we cannot or do not want to do anything about it except using strong (in diplomatic terms) language then we may just as well accept that the psychopathic rulers of NK have the nukes. Or we may consider the question - for instance if that nuclear deterrent really works - do you really think that they would have any problems in nuking part of own country if they saw their control dissolving there? What about seeing and hearing voices paranoid rulers tend to have problems with? What about the nukes when the regime eventually falls apart - possibly in an outburst of violence? is it still a good idea? Do you think deterrence still works in such conditions? OC it still may - but I would not bet on it. So in reality we should be ready for the worst. If that is so maybe we should just do annihilate their sorry state while this still does not cause overall nuclear carnage?
Whether management has understanding for such practices is another thing - in corporation I once worked there were signs on walls to the tune: 'first time right' or 'our goal is faultless software'. Alas all other corporations I had a chance to work for had similar slogans - sometimes I wonder how much they pay somebody for developing of those. Sometimes I think good products are made in spite of 'good' management practice...
For those uninformed here is Where is George wiki.
where to? There is no place without some state claiming ownership over it.
Oh so it is a housing and mortgage that are problematic now? I mean any credit can default and if there is enough defaulted credits there is no system in the world that can sustain damage. There is another problem of course that all the financial products similar to insurance where not following any rules that are forced upon real insurance companies making it impossible to pay in case things go wrong as they seem to do. And then there is another problem that greenback is thought to be world currency and holds to its value although it should not - not with such deficit that US has. Now it works all well as long as holders of dollar denominated reserves believe they have value but it paralyzes the system as the holders are scared shitless to move their dollars and so the gov starts to print big time. Until dollar loses some value the economy will not pick up and this does not happen until dollar falls. I suppose all other problems being big and nasty are just a side effect of the inbalance in US-world relationship where US was allowed to buy products so cheap that their production became unprofitable everywhere else except China etc. The problem became so big that even economy as big as german went down with it. One of the reasons why dollar holds value against other currencies is that countries that still produce anything have no transparent financial markets and governments that all to readily take their money, so even if dollar is not as good as it once was it is still better bet than to live your account in say China. Paradoxically excellence of US and UK financial system breaks the system by itself. It is mind boggling and yet it seems that this was unavoidable as the structures that brought down the system were the same as the ones that made it working in the first place. To see it from another angle the system if left alone will go bananas as it did. Too much freedom for one component (finance) while others have to follow constraints of physical entities is apparently bad. Who might have thought.
I only hope that the return to economical normality will not take another WW.
And also the linux user base is much smaller than the one of windoze which makes possible profit smaller and effort not feasible maybe?
all these analogies are flawed which can be seen if you think for a while what you purchase and how it is delivered. In some countries in EU it is much easier because to deregulate the utilities market authorities require the producers and the grid owners to be different entities and the price at the end consist in principle of two parts: grid usage fee and pay per unit of delievered utility.
There is of course another aspect of this - utilities are common goods i.e. things that we all need. If there is no difference whether you use little or a lot people have no motivation for being reasonable and some are not. If the bandwith limitation that is caused by extreme usage by some causes then deterioration of service for everybody else then it is only reasonable to introduce progressive fees. They do not have to be drastic but I think they can have few thresholds. When the users are informed and the limits are set properly this should not be such a big deal me thinks.
I suppose ensuring that US military uses only US made equipment may decrease their fighting ability unless you consider 'designed & engineered in US' as good enough approximation of 'made in USA'?
I think before you start digging into who designed and made what and whether that is important for national security one should think about what constitutes a superior military power. Not only ability to produce better (usually more expensive) equipment but also ways of using it and ideology driving and motivating your people, the size of force and ability to sustain war effort for long enough time.
If comparing to your opponents your resources are not good enough than you do not start the war. From this perspective it is not really that relevant where your military toys were made if you have enough of them and if they work.
Georgian president did not make any of these calculations last year and see what happened with him and his country.
Some energy may actually be saved (or used differently): after all the producers are not as dumb as they are presenting themselves and they will decrease their power stations output if new usage pattern (with lots of PCs being turned off at night) actually persists. In other words - difficulty in adjusting to power consumption within seconds does not mean that it cannot be/is not done at longer intervals.
What interests me here however is why single out Germany, UK and US? What is so different there?
which is available only in US.
There has been an article on Economist website about the end of the free lunch. The article itself is rather simplistic but what can you expect from economists - anybody that reads news recently should know that they ain't that smart either. They maybe onto something though - majority of web services will need some other revenue than advertising or it will collapse. Whether this eliminates the whole business model I doubt but we are going to see anyway.
There is also another aspect of this cross jumping - some of the highly educated suck big time as engineers. I do not know why is it so but I met quite some of well educated people some of them very intelligent and they still were able to screw things big time and get arrogant if pointed to the miserable results. OTOH some ex-truck drivers were good enough to get to the architects group in a company I once worked for.
I think what you say about interviews is important. Getting to this stage is not easy however and will take a lot of stamina and luck.
This is one of the subjects a good /.er has a strong but rather uninformed opinion and it is meant to be this way, thus you do not really expect anybody here to read referred article in wikipedia, do you?
Tricky lawyers often get bit by the trucks!
here, i fixed that for you :)
If my corporation buys services from global player say HP for instance and this in turn gives away whatever flavour linux they currently support then how this is going to cause money staying locally? I mean HP service desks are all over the place and their HQ is thousands KMs away so the money is flowing around or away but not staying?
Whether windows actually dies is another matter. I think this will not happen or not very soon anyway. All predictions about fast adoption of linux because of it being cheaper have not come true partially because corporate service boys charged a healthy premiums on their linux 'loving' customers. I had problems with that myself too - I had to justify to my box why I wanted to use more expensive product and it was linux that was more expensive than vista installation. The price tags have been set by our IT service support company. If I could install linux box myself of course this would be cheaper but than again maybe against corporate policy too.
OC when it comes to small business that is able to make decision and switch within days of making it then this OS switch actually may happen. Alas not everywhere and for everybody.
which is good - we need no mono-culture.
I for one am trying to reverse the trend or kind of. In my corporation R&D (generally called engineers) can ask for different OS boxes depending on what they think is more feasible. Due to administrative restrictions connected with use of linux box I have just decided to switch to vista (and run linux in vm instead).
On more serious note - Look deep into your soul (if you have one) and honestly answer the question: why do you not like the idea of Linux being wide spread.
Chances are that biggest (and possible one and only) reason is that feeling of exclusivity - being a geek and all - suddenly going away as almost everybody will now get exposed to linux this or the other way.
I think it is a good thing not because I like linux but because if all OSes become normal then decisions will be made for a change on merits instead of propaganda and prejudice.
Forgot this so here I am coming again:
Here in EU tax authorities do not have to have a warrant to investigate tax evasion case and eavesdrop your communications. Moreover the 'innocent until proven guilty' never applied to tax matters at leas in Germany it did not - if you facing tax court (Finanzhof) you have to prove your innocence or you will be found guilty. Sounds fair does it not?
What ever happened to freedom, the right to privacy, search warrants, due process and innocent until proven guilty ?
The answer is: they are all gone, maybe not all completely and at once but that is a good start.
Of course that is all to fight the corruption, money laundering and possibly even terrorism. I wonder why world peace and cancer do not stand on the list of things that should be gone when and if the bank secrecy and so called tax heavens are not there anymore.
I am not sure how it looks like now but few years back I was using dutch railways on regular basis and indeed they were pretty good, much better than Deutsche Bahn. They even paid for taxi to deliver me home when the train had to be stopped for few hours due to tracks problems and due to late hour there have been no other transport means available anymore. I have not seen such service anywhere else. UK trains OTOH are a class for themselves and a disaster and a shame too.
what is there to dispute - if the programming on German television comes from high mountains they put subtitles on and it does make a perfect sense:)
If you want to discuss public transport systems I think you should take UK out of the equation because the country does not have anything that can be called that.