If you've ever hung around with career officers, you'd know they take leadership very seriously. There's a cult novel, Once An Eagle, about one man's military career spanning World War I through Vietnam, and it's all about leadership, motivation, protection, pushing and planning. It oozes contempt for the me-first staff officers as opposed to the officers actually leading troops. (This isn't really fair. Staff officers are essential in a modern army, but in this book they make for a good villain.)
I have no idea of what this means in regard to Trump and his desire for a military coup. He and Hegseth seem to want soldiers out of the Tom of Finland fantasy book. Those are the ones who look like they can win wars, but they're not the kind who actually do win wars. Tom was big on eroticising Nazis.
Officers tend to be more right wing than most Americans, but the actual military mindset has its own set of axes.
P.S. When Trump said he wanted generals like Hitler's, it was hard not to think of the generals who tried to kill him with a bomb under a meeting room table.
In 1848, the revolutions were successful because the national guards usually sided with the protestors. Unfortunately, the protestors had no clue of what to do once they were given a chance to exercise power. The rulers retained the loyalty of the professional military, and once things calmed down they took over again. There was some improvement, but the story of Europe in the 19th century is of cycles of revolution and repression with a slow ratcheting up in liberalization.
He called them the lesser breeds without the law. A lot of people think he was referring to people in the third world, but anyone who reads the poem can tell he was talking about European proto-Nazis.
Several writers over at Substack have started noticing a similar problem. Twitter and Substack both have algorithms that control who gets notified when something is published, so all it takes is a slight bias in that algorithm to totally tilt a platform. Twitter started out with a pretty flat algorithm which is why so many people adopted it, but now only right wing messages get through. Something similar may, and I'll emphasize MAY, be happening on Substack.
In theory, the open web doesn't have this problem, but that requires people to use something like an RSS reader, and even then the internet is effectively centralized so it can be placed under government control. We've seen what happened in China. If things get bad, we may have to stock up on carbon paper and old typewriters and do samizdat.
There's a scene in which Brooks Shield's virginity is auctioned off in a whore house. Afterwards, everyone celebrates, whore, johns, and Shields. As the champagne flows, the auction winner hides his face with his hat and dashes down the back stairs.
Nowadays, he's the role model for everyone in the Republican party.
Whenever push comes to shove Klein parrots conventional propaganda as provided by corporate lobbying groups. He's either seriously ignorant or, as many others have pointed out, eager to please his masters by offering a compelling story that somehow or another glosses over his masters' role in creating the barriers he supposedly objects to. He got his start with some good coverage of medical insurance during the Obamacare debates, but, even then, it was rather obvious that he was aiming for a comfortable cushion as a corporate lapdog.
In the early 90s other agencies built out a lot of the digital fiber backbone. I believe the NSF and NIH were involved as it provided a means of linking their researchers. There were definitely other groups including a fair number installing "black" fiber for military and intelligence communications. I was involved in some of this. NYNEX was one of the contractors we worked with.
The real problem isn't intelligence. It's terms of use limitations enforced by felony contempt of business model. One could pretty simply build a suitable algorithmic system that collects data locally from mail and message feeds and performs suitable actions using apps and websites. The only problem would be that the owners of those corporate apps and websites prohibit that kind of automation. They want users stuck in their walled gardens and to only allow automation that they control.
Artificial intelligence would likely provide a lamer personal assistant than an algorithmic one, but it would provide an excuse for eliminating user privacy.
How many copies of the book were sold? Was it 40,000, 400,000 or 4,000? You really can't understand the economics of the situation without knowing this. Is the problem that authors get too little of the book sale price? Is the problem that there are only so many readers buying books?
This might explain the appearance, starting a few years back, of special edition gruyeres at my local upmarket cheese store. Sometimes it's just Gruyere, but often they have the slightly pricier Gruyere 1655 or Gruyere d'Alpine. I believe the latter is seasonal.
I'm guessing they can trademark Gruyere 1655 and Gruyere d'Alpine. They might be testing the waters for Gruyere Traditionale or the like. The 1655 is extremely intense, almost wine like. The d'Alpine is a tad sweeter with a very fresh dairy note, possibly because it is made with spring milk.
You get this kind of branding with fontina. I usually buy Fontina Val d'Aosta.
Switzerland has been importing workers on limited time visas since early in the 20th century. When I visited a Bulova watch factory in the mid-1960s, the workers were all Italians on work visas. They don't need illegal aliens to build out their workforce since they already have legal mechanisms.
This is nothing new. There's a reason they called superstitious or spurious nonsense an old wives' tale. Wife was just a general word for woman as were was the word for man. e.g. werewolf, wifewolf
They do something similar though mainly with satellite data. Is the distinction the elevation at which the imaging sensor is flown, charging for the use of the imagery or the fact that a little guy can't afford to spend as much on lawyers?
Our smoke alarm started chirping, so we asked Google what three chirps mean. It told us what three beeps mean, so it didn't ask the question. We tried rephrasing with no luck. I tried DuckDuckGo and discovered that it meant the smoke detector was past its expiration date and no longer likely to be accurate.
Unless Google AI gets a lot better, it is going to convince people to move to other search engines that might be able to answer questions.
I just can't muster much sympathy for the guy. He was operating an illegal junk yard. Those things are unsightly, and it is clear his neighbors could see it, and they can be dangerous fire and environmental waste hazards.
There is a general assumption that zoning and tax laws allow properties to be inspected for proper use. If someone does an extensive remodel and turns a shack into a McMansion, tax assessors have a presumed right to come onto the property to assess its new value. Such a right is also built into zoning codes. A long driveway and tree cover shouldn't exempt one from land use laws.
In any event, you'd think that a settlement agreement would imply a right to inspect the property to enforce that settlement. If someone agrees to clean up a pool of toxic waste, for example, it should be implicit in the agreement that the enforcing party is allowed to inspect the pool.
I think this might fall into the realm of Matt Levine's maxim, "Everything is securities fraud." The shareholders are upset about the dilution. They want recourse from the courts. Unfortunately, the only charge against a corporation that sticks nowadays is securities fraud.
I know securities fraud may not be explicitly mentioned, but the only party that can sue a corporation and win is the shareholders and the only charge that goes against current corporate morality is securities fraud, lying to the shareholders.
Reading your comments on Andreessen, it's hard to see how he is not just another out of touch rich guy imagining that his own worst instincts and actions are somehow for the good of the world and the world should simply accept them as a force of nature.
We seem to go through this every so often. New technologies restructure production and the rulers keep the gains for themselves. Offering the actual benefits of the new technology to those less well off has to be done cautiously lest the lower orders forget their place or a new ruling class arises to displace them.
This happened with the Industrial Revolution. It was only the Chartist movement, the revolutions of 1848, the disruptions of the 1870s and finally the world wars and the Great Depression that let the hoi polloi benefit. The ruling class only "shares" at gunpoint. We're seeing it writ small with the "nobody wants to work anymore" mantra which somehow ignores that no one wants to pay anyone to work anymore.
As an article in Fortune magazine in the 1930s put it, industrial progress is inherently progressive. The problem wasn't about production or productive capacity, but the lack of willingness to accept better off underlings. Economists call it the middle income trap and pretend they don't understand its cause.
Andreessen deserved opprobrium. It's a pity that's all he got.
Microsoft may have had the best internet browser, but it was increasingly non-standard. We really would not be where we are today if Microsoft had retained its monopoly power.
Kodak may have had the best color film process, but it was abusing its market power. The settlement required licensing it which created a more competitive film processing market. I remember the decision. It was big news. I also remember film processing prices coming down afterwards.
IBM may have had the best computers, peripherals and software, but it had outsized marketing power. It was forced to license its OS and provide documentation for competitors to build CPUs running its 360 instruction set and peripherals compatible with its processors. You can make all the Amdahl and RCA Soectre jokes you want, but the decision provided space for competitors and, indirectly, for minicomputers.
Xerox may have had the best dry copying technology, but they were forced to license most of the technology leading to an entire industry creating alternative copiers. Most of them were simply less expensive than Xerox's machines, but others were quite innovative.
Standard Oil may have had the best oil production technology but they controlled too much of the market. They were broken up into multiple companies which led to a lower prices and more innovation in the business.
AT&T may have had the best voice and data communications network but they charged high prices for long distance calls to subsidize local service and they quashed innovation. They were split into regional operators and a long distance company. Long distance prices plummeted. Phone technology emerged from its stasis.
Even if Google actually does provide the best search, it uses its monopoly to gouge its customers, the advertisers, and it suppresses innovation in search technology. It's high time it was forced to accept competition.
One of the things that held back smart phones was phone company insistence that all services had to go through them. They didn't even want phones to have WiFi because that would let users do things like stream media or purchase goods without having the phone company in the middle.
Apple disrupted that with the iPhone, but now Apple is too tempted by the same profits that the phone companies had hoped for. Sure, you can use a browser and hope that service workers make the experience more app like, but greed is a powerful force, and it doesn't seem like there is another Steve Jobs out there the disrupt things.
leadership in the military
If you've ever hung around with career officers, you'd know they take leadership very seriously. There's a cult novel, Once An Eagle, about one man's military career spanning World War I through Vietnam, and it's all about leadership, motivation, protection, pushing and planning. It oozes contempt for the me-first staff officers as opposed to the officers actually leading troops. (This isn't really fair. Staff officers are essential in a modern army, but in this book they make for a good villain.) I have no idea of what this means in regard to Trump and his desire for a military coup. He and Hegseth seem to want soldiers out of the Tom of Finland fantasy book. Those are the ones who look like they can win wars, but they're not the kind who actually do win wars. Tom was big on eroticising Nazis. Officers tend to be more right wing than most Americans, but the actual military mindset has its own set of axes. P.S. When Trump said he wanted generals like Hitler's, it was hard not to think of the generals who tried to kill him with a bomb under a meeting room table.
Lessons from history
In 1848, the revolutions were successful because the national guards usually sided with the protestors. Unfortunately, the protestors had no clue of what to do once they were given a chance to exercise power. The rulers retained the loyalty of the professional military, and once things calmed down they took over again. There was some improvement, but the story of Europe in the 19th century is of cycles of revolution and repression with a slow ratcheting up in liberalization.
Kipling knew these guys
He called them the lesser breeds without the law. A lot of people think he was referring to people in the third world, but anyone who reads the poem can tell he was talking about European proto-Nazis.
Substack may have a similar problem
Several writers over at Substack have started noticing a similar problem. Twitter and Substack both have algorithms that control who gets notified when something is published, so all it takes is a slight bias in that algorithm to totally tilt a platform. Twitter started out with a pretty flat algorithm which is why so many people adopted it, but now only right wing messages get through. Something similar may, and I'll emphasize MAY, be happening on Substack. In theory, the open web doesn't have this problem, but that requires people to use something like an RSS reader, and even then the internet is effectively centralized so it can be placed under government control. We've seen what happened in China. If things get bad, we may have to stock up on carbon paper and old typewriters and do samizdat.
Pretty Baby
There's a scene in which Brooks Shield's virginity is auctioned off in a whore house. Afterwards, everyone celebrates, whore, johns, and Shields. As the champagne flows, the auction winner hides his face with his hat and dashes down the back stairs. Nowadays, he's the role model for everyone in the Republican party.
Klein is disingenuous at best
Whenever push comes to shove Klein parrots conventional propaganda as provided by corporate lobbying groups. He's either seriously ignorant or, as many others have pointed out, eager to please his masters by offering a compelling story that somehow or another glosses over his masters' role in creating the barriers he supposedly objects to. He got his start with some good coverage of medical insurance during the Obamacare debates, but, even then, it was rather obvious that he was aiming for a comfortable cushion as a corporate lapdog.
It wasn't just DARPA
In the early 90s other agencies built out a lot of the digital fiber backbone. I believe the NSF and NIH were involved as it provided a means of linking their researchers. There were definitely other groups including a fair number installing "black" fiber for military and intelligence communications. I was involved in some of this. NYNEX was one of the contractors we worked with.
The real problem
The real problem isn't intelligence. It's terms of use limitations enforced by felony contempt of business model. One could pretty simply build a suitable algorithmic system that collects data locally from mail and message feeds and performs suitable actions using apps and websites. The only problem would be that the owners of those corporate apps and websites prohibit that kind of automation. They want users stuck in their walled gardens and to only allow automation that they control. Artificial intelligence would likely provide a lamer personal assistant than an algorithmic one, but it would provide an excuse for eliminating user privacy.
What were the book sales?
How many copies of the book were sold? Was it 40,000, 400,000 or 4,000? You really can't understand the economics of the situation without knowing this. Is the problem that authors get too little of the book sale price? Is the problem that there are only so many readers buying books?
Special editions
This might explain the appearance, starting a few years back, of special edition gruyeres at my local upmarket cheese store. Sometimes it's just Gruyere, but often they have the slightly pricier Gruyere 1655 or Gruyere d'Alpine. I believe the latter is seasonal. I'm guessing they can trademark Gruyere 1655 and Gruyere d'Alpine. They might be testing the waters for Gruyere Traditionale or the like. The 1655 is extremely intense, almost wine like. The d'Alpine is a tad sweeter with a very fresh dairy note, possibly because it is made with spring milk. You get this kind of branding with fontina. I usually buy Fontina Val d'Aosta.
immigrant work force
Switzerland has been importing workers on limited time visas since early in the 20th century. When I visited a Bulova watch factory in the mid-1960s, the workers were all Italians on work visas. They don't need illegal aliens to build out their workforce since they already have legal mechanisms.
old wives tales
This is nothing new. There's a reason they called superstitious or spurious nonsense an old wives' tale. Wife was just a general word for woman as were was the word for man. e.g. werewolf, wifewolf
Has the state fined Google, Microsoft or Apple?
They do something similar though mainly with satellite data. Is the distinction the elevation at which the imaging sensor is flown, charging for the use of the imagery or the fact that a little guy can't afford to spend as much on lawyers?
Google needs better AI
Our smoke alarm started chirping, so we asked Google what three chirps mean. It told us what three beeps mean, so it didn't ask the question. We tried rephrasing with no luck. I tried DuckDuckGo and discovered that it meant the smoke detector was past its expiration date and no longer likely to be accurate. Unless Google AI gets a lot better, it is going to convince people to move to other search engines that might be able to answer questions.
there was a settlement agreement
I just can't muster much sympathy for the guy. He was operating an illegal junk yard. Those things are unsightly, and it is clear his neighbors could see it, and they can be dangerous fire and environmental waste hazards. There is a general assumption that zoning and tax laws allow properties to be inspected for proper use. If someone does an extensive remodel and turns a shack into a McMansion, tax assessors have a presumed right to come onto the property to assess its new value. Such a right is also built into zoning codes. A long driveway and tree cover shouldn't exempt one from land use laws. In any event, you'd think that a settlement agreement would imply a right to inspect the property to enforce that settlement. If someone agrees to clean up a pool of toxic waste, for example, it should be implicit in the agreement that the enforcing party is allowed to inspect the pool.
Matt Levine - Everything is securities fraud.
I think this might fall into the realm of Matt Levine's maxim, "Everything is securities fraud." The shareholders are upset about the dilution. They want recourse from the courts. Unfortunately, the only charge against a corporation that sticks nowadays is securities fraud. I know securities fraud may not be explicitly mentioned, but the only party that can sue a corporation and win is the shareholders and the only charge that goes against current corporate morality is securities fraud, lying to the shareholders.
Reading your comments on Andreessen, it's hard to see how he is not just another out of touch rich guy imagining that his own worst instincts and actions are somehow for the good of the world and the world should simply accept them as a force of nature. We seem to go through this every so often. New technologies restructure production and the rulers keep the gains for themselves. Offering the actual benefits of the new technology to those less well off has to be done cautiously lest the lower orders forget their place or a new ruling class arises to displace them. This happened with the Industrial Revolution. It was only the Chartist movement, the revolutions of 1848, the disruptions of the 1870s and finally the world wars and the Great Depression that let the hoi polloi benefit. The ruling class only "shares" at gunpoint. We're seeing it writ small with the "nobody wants to work anymore" mantra which somehow ignores that no one wants to pay anyone to work anymore. As an article in Fortune magazine in the 1930s put it, industrial progress is inherently progressive. The problem wasn't about production or productive capacity, but the lack of willingness to accept better off underlings. Economists call it the middle income trap and pretend they don't understand its cause. Andreessen deserved opprobrium. It's a pity that's all he got.
Microsoft
Microsoft may have had the best internet browser, but it was increasingly non-standard. We really would not be where we are today if Microsoft had retained its monopoly power.
look at earlier antitrust cases
Kodak may have had the best color film process, but it was abusing its market power. The settlement required licensing it which created a more competitive film processing market. I remember the decision. It was big news. I also remember film processing prices coming down afterwards. IBM may have had the best computers, peripherals and software, but it had outsized marketing power. It was forced to license its OS and provide documentation for competitors to build CPUs running its 360 instruction set and peripherals compatible with its processors. You can make all the Amdahl and RCA Soectre jokes you want, but the decision provided space for competitors and, indirectly, for minicomputers. Xerox may have had the best dry copying technology, but they were forced to license most of the technology leading to an entire industry creating alternative copiers. Most of them were simply less expensive than Xerox's machines, but others were quite innovative. Standard Oil may have had the best oil production technology but they controlled too much of the market. They were broken up into multiple companies which led to a lower prices and more innovation in the business. AT&T may have had the best voice and data communications network but they charged high prices for long distance calls to subsidize local service and they quashed innovation. They were split into regional operators and a long distance company. Long distance prices plummeted. Phone technology emerged from its stasis. Even if Google actually does provide the best search, it uses its monopoly to gouge its customers, the advertisers, and it suppresses innovation in search technology. It's high time it was forced to accept competition.
Apple has become the phone company
One of the things that held back smart phones was phone company insistence that all services had to go through them. They didn't even want phones to have WiFi because that would let users do things like stream media or purchase goods without having the phone company in the middle. Apple disrupted that with the iPhone, but now Apple is too tempted by the same profits that the phone companies had hoped for. Sure, you can use a browser and hope that service workers make the experience more app like, but greed is a powerful force, and it doesn't seem like there is another Steve Jobs out there the disrupt things.