The Iraq war was a gigantic subsidy to the oil industry.
The Iraqi oil fields are owned and operated by the Iraqi Government. Occasionally they lease production to American drilling firms but Iraq's oil industry is largely a competitor to America's.
If the US and the EU decide to leave their renewable energy sector to the whims of the free market, while allowing China to subsidizes the hell out of it- we might as well just hand the entire industry over to them.
And if Chinese taxpayers foot our bill, what's the problem with that exactly? I'm not bothered by some foreign country subsidizing my lifestyle.
you mean like coal, gas and oil pay their own way? They get hundreds of billions of dollars worth of subsidies every year.
Not really. They pretty much get standard equipment depreciation schedules, present in virtually all heavy industry. They also get to deduct dry wells and other losses, also pretty standard stuff. Ethanol is a racket and basically just exist so that we may sacrifice to the corn gods, but oil and gas don't really get many subsidies that aren't standard for all industries. Per kilowatt hour, renewables get far more in the way of subsidies than oil or coal.
This is the ultimate example of the failure of capitalism. The wealthy and closed mided are able to push their agenda and beliefs, no matter how preposterous, to the masses because they buy the most while greedy publishers are willing to forgo fact over profit.
In other words, capitalism fails because it is exactly like every other system. I don't recall people praising Mao or Stalin for their open-mindedness.
If only 6 of the board members are actively trying to screw with the process, that's pretty good. If 11 out of every 14 people (yeah, an ugly ratio) accept evolution, I'd say scientific literacy isn't really threatened.
Gods? What have they done lately? Promulgate fear and hatred, ignorance and death. Is it any wonder people have been rejecting gods for a century? There's really no contest.
Can you imagine a society that officially renounced belief in God? I can, because the USSR and Mao's China essentially did just that... and promptly started to promulgate fear, hatred, ignorance and death at a rate that has yet to be matched by any society in history. Germany, under national socialism, also devoted a great deal of effort towards science and essentially squelched the church and ended up with similar results.
I personally agree with the idea that evolution should be taught and not creationism but I'm not about to denounce religion without contemplating the alternatives.
The majority of Texans are not stupid, and even if they have their own private reservations,
they know that the science of evolution is a basis for a large fraction of the modern economy.
Actually, I would disagree with the notion that evolution is a basis for the economy. The overall economic impact of the teaching of the theory of evolution is probably pretty limited. Yes, it matters to those with careers in biology, but those people would probably be taught about the theory of evolution (in much greater detail) during college.
Like most "social issues" such as gay marriage, abortion, the NSA PRISIM program, assault weapons laws, etc. the way students are taught about evolution may make an effective political wedge issue, but its actual effect on people's lives is generally small.
Regardless of their opinion of evolution, I imagine most Texans simply vote their party and the vast majority probably couldn't tell you who their school board member is or what he believes. A sizable chunk wouldn't even know what they themselves think about evolution. Many simply have never stopped to think about it because they're busy with other aspects of life.
This is also true of any other state. Almost any state will have drawbacks. I'm just as uncomfortable with some left wing state dominating the textbook market. If California were the market leader for instance, I can imagine we'd go from the creationist in Texas being a voice to the eco-cult of California insisting that GMO's cause cancer / environmental collapse / human mutations. Rather than dealing with the global warming deniers in Texas, we'd be dealing with the Chicken Little "the sky is falling" types which, if we're being honest, aren't really any more productive.
There's this one out West somewhere....Cali-something-or-other.
California is much more of a "local control" state than Texas is. Texas gives the Texas Board of Education a huge amount of power in deciding which textbooks are purchased while California largely lets individual school boards (and in some cases, individual schools) make those decisions. Thus the entire State of Texas pretty much ends up buying the same books making Texas the most influential market in the country for textbooks.
To be fair, science is effectively a belief system,
Science is more of a process than a belief. When we use the term "science" we are referring to the use of the scientific method to acquire knowledge about the natural world. Science itself prescribes no ethics, no meanings to life, no philosophies and, being the study of the natural world, has nothing to say regarding the existence of supernatural beings. If you look at scientific scholars you will find a diverse array of religious beliefs, philosophic beliefs and life practices. Science is not a belief system.
Then God was pleased, for he could cast the sinning Eve as the first human that the kind and loving God tossed into the lake of fire, to be tortured forever and ever, Amen.
Except that God isn't "tossing" people into the lake of fire. Christian theology seems to suggest that people who willingly reject God are going to hell by their own hands.
We do stil have that to a degree, even in most republics. The Koch brothers, for example, have considerable political clout mainly as a result of inherited money. And is was hardly a pure coincidence that George W Bush was in a posiiton follow his father's footsteps to become president.
The Koch brothers inherited a family owned business and, rather than going public, decided to keep it family owned. Just because their business is larger than others doesn't make it unique. Plenty of business owners inherited their family's firm.
Yes, Bush inherited political clout. Names like Bush, Clinton, Kennedy, Roosevelt, etc. have long carried power in the states dating clear back to John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams (John Adams even alluded to believing that the USA might benefit from inherited titles of nobility)
Some families produce politicians. Some families produce musicians. Some families produce football and baseball players. Some families produce businessmen. You can inherit talent and you can inherit a family name just as well as you can inherit wealth or good genetics. This isn't news to anyone.
I think that one of the things that people worry about with Prince Charles is that he does state opinions about a lot of things, and that, should he become King, he might start trying to turn some of his nominal powers into actual ones.
Your current monarch has done an outstanding job of remaining impartial and generally avoiding meddling in day-to-day political affairs. Under your system, a good monarch should. Charles however, does not inspire confidence that this will continue once he has the crown.
Second, the monarch can dissolve parliament which triggers a general election. I'd guess this means that, in the event of a knife edge like the one that got Bush in as president, so none of the parties can form a government, rather then wrangling in court, the monarch can effectively force another vote.
For those of use curious enough to watch, there was coverage of your last election here in the States and, for all intensive purposes, your last national election did end up being a knife edge. No party (or traditional coalition) ended up in the majority which is how you ended up with your Tory/Liberal coalition government, quite the political odd couple. The last time you ended up with a "hung parliament" was, if I remember right, back in the 70's which basically just resulted in a horrible mess and then another round of elections. This time, it was something your politicians kind of suspected might happen when the Conservatives started to lose steam near the end of the campaign so coalition talks were mostly in the works before the results were announced.
I suppose the big thing the monarch could do is force an election in the event Parliament simply refused to call one. My understanding is the "term" of a parliament isn't 100% codified but elections are traditionally held at least every 5-ish years (though sooner if the majority thinks it will gain seats and the WWII parliament didn't call an election for almost a decade due to the war). I suppose the queen could deny ascent to anything blatantly corrupt like a law meddling with the Boundaries Commission (oh how I wish we had one of those in the States) or some law denying the opposition party TV time or something. Much like your government's upper chamber, she's not much of a check, but with so few checks and balances, there needs to be some sort of check on power.
Yes, and we are all her "subjects", and pay for the upkeep of her properties and for state events in her honour. Most unsatisfactory.
We in the states pay for a lot of pomp and circumstances that are, from a pragmatic perspective, generally unnecessary. In this age of teleconferencing, there isn't much reason for our Presidents, Veeps, SoS's, members of Congress, etc. to be traveling around the globe. There isn't much of a need for the constant cross-country tours most of our politicians go on too. We don't really need a massive inauguration ceremony nor long fancy swearing in ceremonies for members of Congress.
Hell, we don't really need a full-time Congress. Our second most populous state, Texas, has a legislature that meets for a single 140 day session every 2 years (and Texans generally joke that they'd rather it just meet for 2 days every 140 years). A good chunk of our states have part-time legislatures so Congress probably would do fine on those terms too. Heck they'd probably cause fewer problems and it would be nice having our Congress run by people who didn't list "politician" as their primary career.
Government comes with needless formalities. It comes with being ruled by people who like to be popular unfortunately.
My thoughts exactly.
We are getting a new form of Monarchy right now via the inequality in wealth distribution.
First off, wealth has always been uneven in society. If you happen to live in a modern 1st world country you had probably best refrain from moaning about uneven amounts of wealth since chances are you're probably better off than 90% of the planet.
Second off, wealth isn't "distributed" in any real sense. Wealth is created through investment.
Third off, a typical American or European at poverty level generally has a more comfortable life than a king would have a couple hundred years ago. Air conditioning, communication, healthcare, pick your metric. You're generally better off as a poor person now than as a monarch 200 years ago. Heck even the 19th century titans of industry don't have it as good as I do. I have access to eye surgery, air conditioning, a nationwide highway system, affordable international air travel, a robust vaccination regiment, the Internet, a microwave oven, TV, antibiotics, cell phones, etc. John D. Rockefeller may have been worth $350 billion in today's money, but he had none of these things.
Wal-Mart hardly creates serfdom. A serf is someone who is legally "free" but has a de facto obligation to a de facto master. I'm free to shop at any retailer. I'm free to work wherever I want. I do not always shop at Wal-Mart and I've never worked for them. This isn't just the case for me, this is the case for the extreme majority of the country.
Answer: 'Controls' is the operative word there. Right now they control the dollar -- Well, actually a non-federal owned Federal Reserve does. Would you rather be paid in IOUS redeemable at the company store, or have a real currency? The dollar is the IOU, they can print as much as they want.
Except that the value of the dollar has been relatively stable and changes in value have been relatively mild with an inflation rate of a little over 1.1%. The dollar's exchange rate with other relatively stable reserve foreign currencies like the Euro, Yen, Pound and Franc hasn't generally been subject to wild fluctuations. Compare the dollar to bitcoin who's exchange rate has fluctuated wildly in the last year. Furthermore, rise in demand for bitcoin has caused a tendency for it to drift towards deflation
Ignorance: Blissfully believing that the price of stock or the dollar really mean anything; It's the exchange rate for GOODS AND SERVICES you fool. These can be transacted with bitcoin or dollars. Except with bitcoin I can exchange them for stuff not in the company store.
Actually, I don't know of any local businesses in my town that accept bitcoin. I have yet to encounter one who won't accept good ol American greenbacks.
The bitcoin has a niche market that it can fill but don't mistake it for a replacement to the dollar. If you want to send money to a group helping dissadents in China or Jews in Iran, bitcoin may be the best solution. If you live in Venezuela where they suffer from 40% rates of inflation, bitcoin might be preferable. The USA's banking system and the US Dollar are among the soundest and stablest in the world. No, bitcoin won't replace the dollar any time soon.
Microsoft's purchase of Nokia might be bad news for... Blackberry! Yes, Blackberry's current niche is with enterprise is basically that they own the hardware, the software and they have server software for the back end. Really tight Exchange and Active Directory integration on mobile devices would be something a few companies would love to have. Most companies already have Microsoft's Windows Server deployed with Active Directory and a good chunk of them already have Exchange. Tack on integration with other Microsoft technologies like Sharepoint, Remote Desktop, WSUS, SCCM and full-featured versions of good 'ol Office and Microsoft might be in a great position to command a strong niche market for enterprises.
Windows 8 based phones and tablets may never be popular with consumers, but Microsoft doesn't necessarily need to have them be their customers. Enterprises are already using Windows Server to manage their computers so some might naturally veer towards using mobile devices that can be managed in the same way.
This is what I love about China. They're completely up front about who they are. In the US everything needs to be carefully cloaked in terms of protection from terrorists.
If Snowden had never released those documents, be honest, nobody in the general public would have noticed PRISM. The reason nobody would've noticed is the NSA isn't hauling people off to prison. The people in China are well aware of their government's censorship and of the police state. In China, websites actually are blocked. In China, people publishing material that is critical of the government are actually thrown in jail for it.
Quick couple of questions. What's a communist to you? If it has something to do with authoritarian statism, I'd really appreciate a more detailed answer. Do you think that North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and China are all communist? If so, could you detail the similarities between them that make them communist?
Thanks.
The hallmark of a capitalistic society and the antithesis of communism is property rights. A capitalistic society is founded on the principal of individual ownership while communism is founded on the principal of collective ownership. Property rights in China are inconsistently enforced and they basically don't exist in Vietnam, Cuba or North Korea.
Intellectual property is even less likely to be coherently codified and respected in these countries. It is only occasionally enforced in China and basically never enforced in Vietnam, Cuba or North Korea. In China's case, government agencies occasionally even help Chinese companies violate the intellectual property rights of foreign companies.
Property rights can't truly exist without a fair and impartial judicial system to recognize and arbitrate property rights. China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba do not have a stable judicial system that allows for legitimate judicial rulings over property case law.
Great idea but it's not exactly a secret that Google has a lot of trouble convincing carriers and OEMs to update their devices. Ordinarily, that would blunt the ability to fix problems and add features to existing devices but Google has an answer to that. Since Google can't convince carriers and OEMs to update their devices (apart from Google's own Nexus line), Google crafted a workaround.
If you have an Android device and you check your installed apps (make sure its on the All tab and not the Downloaded tab) you'll probably see an app called Google Play Services. If you check the permissions on this app you'll see it pretty much has the authority to do pretty much anything it wants. It can even alter its own permissions without notifying the user and updates itself silently without relying on the Play Store to do so. Ordinarily, this kind of God-like app would be creepy but Google has basically used it to bypass carriers and OEMs and push out new features without having to actually update the OS. Pretty much any device running Froyo (2.2) or higher uses this.
I wonder if Google actually needs to update the Android OS itself to fix bugs or if they can just use the Play Services app to work around this.
When Windows is used in the enterprise it's used generally because the stake holders buy into the commercial software model and have beliefs that systems backed by giant companies (be it Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc...) provide less risk. When a project ends up in flames at least they have a lifeline to call. Well, that is the perception. We know it doesn't really play out like that most of the time.
If you're a stake holder in the other camp (lean start up, et al) then you're on an Linux based open source stack and taking advantage of the maturity of that open ecosystem. So I don't know where this would fit. I guess I could see Oracle or IBM funding it and trying to grow it to a point they could offer it as another option. Outside the enterprise Windows is just a walking dead OS.
Windows is used in the enterprise because of Active Directory, Office, Exchange/Outlook and the very long product support lifecycles.
Windows is used at home because it's what they use at work, it's what they've learned to use, it's what came with the computer, it has Microsoft Office and it has games & DirectX.
For all the progress cloud based software, WINE, Libre Office, various Linux driver projects, et al have made and for all the dramatic improvements in Linux's usability, Windows is still the de facto desktop and laptop OS of choice for homes and offices. I use Linux as my primary OS at home. I like Linux because it does what I want, but it's not right for everyone. I still occasionally boot into Windows to use Office or play games and as much as I like Linux, I don't see the need to evangelize about it or to care about its marketshare.
Doesn't it comes with serious caveats, like losing some of the phone's functionality?
I remember last time I researched it, you'd lose camera completely or camera quality would degrade massively and some other functionality of the phone got lost upon installing cyanogenmod.
Sometimes nightly builds have this issue. Usually by the time you get to release candidates this issue is solved. My Droid 4 has been happily running Cyanogenmod for several months.
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The Iraq war was a gigantic subsidy to the oil industry.
The Iraqi oil fields are owned and operated by the Iraqi Government. Occasionally they lease production to American drilling firms but Iraq's oil industry is largely a competitor to America's.
If the US and the EU decide to leave their renewable energy sector to the whims of the free market, while allowing China to subsidizes the hell out of it- we might as well just hand the entire industry over to them.
And if Chinese taxpayers foot our bill, what's the problem with that exactly? I'm not bothered by some foreign country subsidizing my lifestyle.
you mean like coal, gas and oil pay their own way? They get hundreds of billions of dollars worth of subsidies every year.
Not really. They pretty much get standard equipment depreciation schedules, present in virtually all heavy industry. They also get to deduct dry wells and other losses, also pretty standard stuff. Ethanol is a racket and basically just exist so that we may sacrifice to the corn gods, but oil and gas don't really get many subsidies that aren't standard for all industries. Per kilowatt hour, renewables get far more in the way of subsidies than oil or coal.
This is the ultimate example of the failure of capitalism. The wealthy and closed mided are able to push their agenda and beliefs, no matter how preposterous, to the masses because they buy the most while greedy publishers are willing to forgo fact over profit.
In other words, capitalism fails because it is exactly like every other system. I don't recall people praising Mao or Stalin for their open-mindedness.
If only 6 of the board members are actively trying to screw with the process, that's pretty good. If 11 out of every 14 people (yeah, an ugly ratio) accept evolution, I'd say scientific literacy isn't really threatened.
Gods? What have they done lately? Promulgate fear and hatred, ignorance and death. Is it any wonder people have been rejecting gods for a century? There's really no contest.
Can you imagine a society that officially renounced belief in God? I can, because the USSR and Mao's China essentially did just that... and promptly started to promulgate fear, hatred, ignorance and death at a rate that has yet to be matched by any society in history. Germany, under national socialism, also devoted a great deal of effort towards science and essentially squelched the church and ended up with similar results.
I personally agree with the idea that evolution should be taught and not creationism but I'm not about to denounce religion without contemplating the alternatives.
The majority of Texans are not stupid, and even if they have their own private reservations, they know that the science of evolution is a basis for a large fraction of the modern economy.
Actually, I would disagree with the notion that evolution is a basis for the economy. The overall economic impact of the teaching of the theory of evolution is probably pretty limited. Yes, it matters to those with careers in biology, but those people would probably be taught about the theory of evolution (in much greater detail) during college.
Like most "social issues" such as gay marriage, abortion, the NSA PRISIM program, assault weapons laws, etc. the way students are taught about evolution may make an effective political wedge issue, but its actual effect on people's lives is generally small.
Regardless of their opinion of evolution, I imagine most Texans simply vote their party and the vast majority probably couldn't tell you who their school board member is or what he believes. A sizable chunk wouldn't even know what they themselves think about evolution. Many simply have never stopped to think about it because they're busy with other aspects of life.
To be replaced in the textbook market by????
This is also true of any other state. Almost any state will have drawbacks. I'm just as uncomfortable with some left wing state dominating the textbook market. If California were the market leader for instance, I can imagine we'd go from the creationist in Texas being a voice to the eco-cult of California insisting that GMO's cause cancer / environmental collapse / human mutations. Rather than dealing with the global warming deniers in Texas, we'd be dealing with the Chicken Little "the sky is falling" types which, if we're being honest, aren't really any more productive.
There's this one out West somewhere....Cali-something-or-other.
California is much more of a "local control" state than Texas is. Texas gives the Texas Board of Education a huge amount of power in deciding which textbooks are purchased while California largely lets individual school boards (and in some cases, individual schools) make those decisions. Thus the entire State of Texas pretty much ends up buying the same books making Texas the most influential market in the country for textbooks.
To be fair, science is effectively a belief system,
Science is more of a process than a belief. When we use the term "science" we are referring to the use of the scientific method to acquire knowledge about the natural world. Science itself prescribes no ethics, no meanings to life, no philosophies and, being the study of the natural world, has nothing to say regarding the existence of supernatural beings. If you look at scientific scholars you will find a diverse array of religious beliefs, philosophic beliefs and life practices. Science is not a belief system.
Then God was pleased, for he could cast the sinning Eve as the first human that the kind and loving God tossed into the lake of fire, to be tortured forever and ever, Amen.
Except that God isn't "tossing" people into the lake of fire. Christian theology seems to suggest that people who willingly reject God are going to hell by their own hands.
We do stil have that to a degree, even in most republics. The Koch brothers, for example, have considerable political clout mainly as a result of inherited money. And is was hardly a pure coincidence that George W Bush was in a posiiton follow his father's footsteps to become president.
The Koch brothers inherited a family owned business and, rather than going public, decided to keep it family owned. Just because their business is larger than others doesn't make it unique. Plenty of business owners inherited their family's firm.
Yes, Bush inherited political clout. Names like Bush, Clinton, Kennedy, Roosevelt, etc. have long carried power in the states dating clear back to John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams (John Adams even alluded to believing that the USA might benefit from inherited titles of nobility)
Some families produce politicians. Some families produce musicians. Some families produce football and baseball players. Some families produce businessmen. You can inherit talent and you can inherit a family name just as well as you can inherit wealth or good genetics. This isn't news to anyone.
I think that one of the things that people worry about with Prince Charles is that he does state opinions about a lot of things, and that, should he become King, he might start trying to turn some of his nominal powers into actual ones.
Your current monarch has done an outstanding job of remaining impartial and generally avoiding meddling in day-to-day political affairs. Under your system, a good monarch should. Charles however, does not inspire confidence that this will continue once he has the crown.
Second, the monarch can dissolve parliament which triggers a general election. I'd guess this means that, in the event of a knife edge like the one that got Bush in as president, so none of the parties can form a government, rather then wrangling in court, the monarch can effectively force another vote.
For those of use curious enough to watch, there was coverage of your last election here in the States and, for all intensive purposes, your last national election did end up being a knife edge. No party (or traditional coalition) ended up in the majority which is how you ended up with your Tory/Liberal coalition government, quite the political odd couple. The last time you ended up with a "hung parliament" was, if I remember right, back in the 70's which basically just resulted in a horrible mess and then another round of elections. This time, it was something your politicians kind of suspected might happen when the Conservatives started to lose steam near the end of the campaign so coalition talks were mostly in the works before the results were announced.
I suppose the big thing the monarch could do is force an election in the event Parliament simply refused to call one. My understanding is the "term" of a parliament isn't 100% codified but elections are traditionally held at least every 5-ish years (though sooner if the majority thinks it will gain seats and the WWII parliament didn't call an election for almost a decade due to the war). I suppose the queen could deny ascent to anything blatantly corrupt like a law meddling with the Boundaries Commission (oh how I wish we had one of those in the States) or some law denying the opposition party TV time or something. Much like your government's upper chamber, she's not much of a check, but with so few checks and balances, there needs to be some sort of check on power.
Yes, and we are all her "subjects", and pay for the upkeep of her properties and for state events in her honour. Most unsatisfactory.
We in the states pay for a lot of pomp and circumstances that are, from a pragmatic perspective, generally unnecessary. In this age of teleconferencing, there isn't much reason for our Presidents, Veeps, SoS's, members of Congress, etc. to be traveling around the globe. There isn't much of a need for the constant cross-country tours most of our politicians go on too. We don't really need a massive inauguration ceremony nor long fancy swearing in ceremonies for members of Congress.
Hell, we don't really need a full-time Congress. Our second most populous state, Texas, has a legislature that meets for a single 140 day session every 2 years (and Texans generally joke that they'd rather it just meet for 2 days every 140 years). A good chunk of our states have part-time legislatures so Congress probably would do fine on those terms too. Heck they'd probably cause fewer problems and it would be nice having our Congress run by people who didn't list "politician" as their primary career.
Government comes with needless formalities. It comes with being ruled by people who like to be popular unfortunately.
My thoughts exactly. We are getting a new form of Monarchy right now via the inequality in wealth distribution.
First off, wealth has always been uneven in society. If you happen to live in a modern 1st world country you had probably best refrain from moaning about uneven amounts of wealth since chances are you're probably better off than 90% of the planet.
Second off, wealth isn't "distributed" in any real sense. Wealth is created through investment.
Third off, a typical American or European at poverty level generally has a more comfortable life than a king would have a couple hundred years ago. Air conditioning, communication, healthcare, pick your metric. You're generally better off as a poor person now than as a monarch 200 years ago. Heck even the 19th century titans of industry don't have it as good as I do. I have access to eye surgery, air conditioning, a nationwide highway system, affordable international air travel, a robust vaccination regiment, the Internet, a microwave oven, TV, antibiotics, cell phones, etc. John D. Rockefeller may have been worth $350 billion in today's money, but he had none of these things.
Bringing back serfdom.
Wal-Mart hardly creates serfdom. A serf is someone who is legally "free" but has a de facto obligation to a de facto master. I'm free to shop at any retailer. I'm free to work wherever I want. I do not always shop at Wal-Mart and I've never worked for them. This isn't just the case for me, this is the case for the extreme majority of the country.
Answer: 'Controls' is the operative word there. Right now they control the dollar -- Well, actually a non-federal owned Federal Reserve does. Would you rather be paid in IOUS redeemable at the company store, or have a real currency? The dollar is the IOU, they can print as much as they want.
Except that the value of the dollar has been relatively stable and changes in value have been relatively mild with an inflation rate of a little over 1.1%. The dollar's exchange rate with other relatively stable reserve foreign currencies like the Euro, Yen, Pound and Franc hasn't generally been subject to wild fluctuations. Compare the dollar to bitcoin who's exchange rate has fluctuated wildly in the last year. Furthermore, rise in demand for bitcoin has caused a tendency for it to drift towards deflation
Ignorance: Blissfully believing that the price of stock or the dollar really mean anything; It's the exchange rate for GOODS AND SERVICES you fool. These can be transacted with bitcoin or dollars. Except with bitcoin I can exchange them for stuff not in the company store.
Actually, I don't know of any local businesses in my town that accept bitcoin. I have yet to encounter one who won't accept good ol American greenbacks.
The bitcoin has a niche market that it can fill but don't mistake it for a replacement to the dollar. If you want to send money to a group helping dissadents in China or Jews in Iran, bitcoin may be the best solution. If you live in Venezuela where they suffer from 40% rates of inflation, bitcoin might be preferable. The USA's banking system and the US Dollar are among the soundest and stablest in the world. No, bitcoin won't replace the dollar any time soon.
Microsoft's purchase of Nokia might be bad news for... Blackberry! Yes, Blackberry's current niche is with enterprise is basically that they own the hardware, the software and they have server software for the back end. Really tight Exchange and Active Directory integration on mobile devices would be something a few companies would love to have. Most companies already have Microsoft's Windows Server deployed with Active Directory and a good chunk of them already have Exchange. Tack on integration with other Microsoft technologies like Sharepoint, Remote Desktop, WSUS, SCCM and full-featured versions of good 'ol Office and Microsoft might be in a great position to command a strong niche market for enterprises.
Windows 8 based phones and tablets may never be popular with consumers, but Microsoft doesn't necessarily need to have them be their customers. Enterprises are already using Windows Server to manage their computers so some might naturally veer towards using mobile devices that can be managed in the same way.
This is what I love about China. They're completely up front about who they are. In the US everything needs to be carefully cloaked in terms of protection from terrorists.
If Snowden had never released those documents, be honest, nobody in the general public would have noticed PRISM. The reason nobody would've noticed is the NSA isn't hauling people off to prison. The people in China are well aware of their government's censorship and of the police state. In China, websites actually are blocked. In China, people publishing material that is critical of the government are actually thrown in jail for it.
Quick couple of questions. What's a communist to you? If it has something to do with authoritarian statism, I'd really appreciate a more detailed answer. Do you think that North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and China are all communist? If so, could you detail the similarities between them that make them communist? Thanks.
The hallmark of a capitalistic society and the antithesis of communism is property rights. A capitalistic society is founded on the principal of individual ownership while communism is founded on the principal of collective ownership. Property rights in China are inconsistently enforced and they basically don't exist in Vietnam, Cuba or North Korea.
Intellectual property is even less likely to be coherently codified and respected in these countries. It is only occasionally enforced in China and basically never enforced in Vietnam, Cuba or North Korea. In China's case, government agencies occasionally even help Chinese companies violate the intellectual property rights of foreign companies.
Property rights can't truly exist without a fair and impartial judicial system to recognize and arbitrate property rights. China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba do not have a stable judicial system that allows for legitimate judicial rulings over property case law.
and a cartridge designed to release smell
Damn, now I don't get to say: "Your Xbox stinks!"
When the game EarthBound came out for the SNES, it came with scratch and sniff stickers and was sold with the tag line "this games stinks".
Great idea but it's not exactly a secret that Google has a lot of trouble convincing carriers and OEMs to update their devices. Ordinarily, that would blunt the ability to fix problems and add features to existing devices but Google has an answer to that. Since Google can't convince carriers and OEMs to update their devices (apart from Google's own Nexus line), Google crafted a workaround.
If you have an Android device and you check your installed apps (make sure its on the All tab and not the Downloaded tab) you'll probably see an app called Google Play Services. If you check the permissions on this app you'll see it pretty much has the authority to do pretty much anything it wants. It can even alter its own permissions without notifying the user and updates itself silently without relying on the Play Store to do so. Ordinarily, this kind of God-like app would be creepy but Google has basically used it to bypass carriers and OEMs and push out new features without having to actually update the OS. Pretty much any device running Froyo (2.2) or higher uses this.
I wonder if Google actually needs to update the Android OS itself to fix bugs or if they can just use the Play Services app to work around this.
When Windows is used in the enterprise it's used generally because the stake holders buy into the commercial software model and have beliefs that systems backed by giant companies (be it Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc...) provide less risk. When a project ends up in flames at least they have a lifeline to call. Well, that is the perception. We know it doesn't really play out like that most of the time. If you're a stake holder in the other camp (lean start up, et al) then you're on an Linux based open source stack and taking advantage of the maturity of that open ecosystem. So I don't know where this would fit. I guess I could see Oracle or IBM funding it and trying to grow it to a point they could offer it as another option. Outside the enterprise Windows is just a walking dead OS.
Windows is used in the enterprise because of Active Directory, Office, Exchange/Outlook and the very long product support lifecycles.
Windows is used at home because it's what they use at work, it's what they've learned to use, it's what came with the computer, it has Microsoft Office and it has games & DirectX.
For all the progress cloud based software, WINE, Libre Office, various Linux driver projects, et al have made and for all the dramatic improvements in Linux's usability, Windows is still the de facto desktop and laptop OS of choice for homes and offices. I use Linux as my primary OS at home. I like Linux because it does what I want, but it's not right for everyone. I still occasionally boot into Windows to use Office or play games and as much as I like Linux, I don't see the need to evangelize about it or to care about its marketshare.
Doesn't it comes with serious caveats, like losing some of the phone's functionality? I remember last time I researched it, you'd lose camera completely or camera quality would degrade massively and some other functionality of the phone got lost upon installing cyanogenmod.
Sometimes nightly builds have this issue. Usually by the time you get to release candidates this issue is solved. My Droid 4 has been happily running Cyanogenmod for several months.