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Comment The "secret plan" to end the war (Score 1) 536

Few who lived through this era will be completely surprised by these revelations. Nixon was elected in part on his assertion that he had "a secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. Now we know what his plan was.

Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion. Nixon was brought down by the cover-up of the Watergate break-ins. In both cases, the most trivial of their offenses was the cause of their downfalls.

Comment Re:Can't America get its acts together ? (Score 1) 1059

You're right, of course - but this is the not the argument being discussed. With respect to the debt ceiling, the US has made sovereign legal contracts with its bondholders to pay interest and principle on these debts. If the debt ceiling is not lifted, the United States of America will default on these obligations. Its the equivalent of a household deciding they've reached the most they want to pay out every month, so they don't pay the mortgage - guess what? Foreclosure proceedings will soon follow.

Comment Big difference - feedback. (Score 1) 198

There's a huge difference between models in Newton's world and models in the financial world - feedback. A model that is successful in the real world will always be successful within its parameters. In the financial world, a successful model actually changes the parameters of the world it is modeling. Financial markets work on expectations. A good model changes the expectations of the system which changes its behavior. This feedback effect thus can invalidate the model over time.

It really isn't valid to compare physical models to financial models. Financial models behave much more like models in the social sciences.

Linux Business

FAA May Ditch Vista For Linux 359

An anonymous reader writes "Another straw in the wind: following last week's news that the US Department of Transportation is putting a halt on upgrades to Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Internet Explorer 7, today comes word that the Federal Aviation Administration may ditch Vista and Office in favor of Google's new online business applications running on Linux-based hardware. (The FAA is part of the DOT.) The FAA's CIO David Bowen told InformationWeek he's taking a close look at the Premier Edition of Google Apps as he mulls replacements for the agency's Windows XP-based desktop computers. Bowen cited several reasons why he finds Google Apps attractive. 'From a security and management standpoint that would have some advantages,' he said."

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