"I love it when people are trying to say that monopoly is not the goal of capitalism. Every firms goal in the free market is to dominate the whole market. Not to create the best product, or provide competition, but to earn the most money, and the best way to do that is a monopoly."
Congratulations. You've won the "Didn't Read What The Other Person Just Wrote" award.
You DO know that Adam Smith is the person who defined capitalism, yes?
" But for some stupid reason, a lot of curmudgeons would rather we stick with 30-year-old technology that doesn't work half as well as what Microsoft has been using for ages and wasn't designed for modern use cases."
That "stupid reason" is that others want it to be an open process and not have decisions about it unilaterally forced upon them by the giant, unfriendly gorilla in the room.
Is there something about that you find hard to understand?
"I'm glad you agree the art study would still be valid even if it only reported the students who improved after visiting the museum, and never reported the number who didn't improve."
That isn't what I wrote, either. Frankly, I don't understand where you are getting these ideas, and I'm starting to get a bit peeved that you're trying to attribute them to me.
"Come on You capitalist crusaders, let's see a little smoke. If what you believe is true (that lack of competition is the source of lack of innovation), go and create competition to The Big Government, and may the best person win. I'm sure they will try to innovate a solution, and not act like a capitalist -- that is smack You down with its unfairly distributed power."
You have obviously never read Adam Smith. Or if you did, you didn't understand it.
Even Smith knew that capitalism would require anti-trust regulation, and he stated as much quite clearly. Monopoly, or its friends "corporatism" and its alias "Crony Capitalism" are not actual capitalism, at all. They are, quite exactly, what Mussolini described when he defined the term "Fascism".
"Competition motivates (or rather drives) innovation -- it does so by putting a cost on lack of innovation."
This was a big part of my point.
" A person in a desert, while being completely alone, is encouraged to innovate by sheer forces of physics. A virus threatening our species survival would encourage innovation in a country based on capitalism or communism. Or probably any other system, maybe with the exception of theocracy."
The problem with your speech here is that you are postulating only scenarios that foster innovation. Monopoly and oligopoly actively suppress innovation, because any freedom- or competition-leaning change in the status quo threatens their hold on the market.
"The funny thing is, the laws that You are so adamantly trying to overturn are usually in place to try and protect small firms from larger ones"
And what laws would those be? It's funny, because I haven't mentioned anything of the sort. Though I could, if you want to go there. But don't make assumptions about what I'd say, because you would very likely be wrong.
"The Americas predicament is the result of its hubris as a worlds superpower. "
This isn't "The Americas" predicament. What a foolish thing to say. It may be what certain politicians are trying to do, but if you think they have the support of The American People (North or South) in doing it, you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground.
The predicament of "The Americas" is precisely that their governments are not doing what their people want. That situation will not last forever. But I will repeat: if you make the mistake of thinking that what our governments have been doing represent "the will of the people", you had better start re-thinking a few things.
"This means that the near-infra-red emitters and camera have become so cheap as to be mass marketable. Hold off for six or so months before buying a vein finder for medical use, you could save 90% on the price... or maybe the next generation of smart phones will support this?"
There is ZERO new here on the hardware end. The hardware has been capable for more than 10 years (some video cameras took advantage of this near-infrared sensitivity of CMOS sensors by offering a "night mode".)
The only difference is that some people are finally figuring out ways to exploit it.
"90% of everything is crap, but at least with open source you can find out why instead of waiting for the developers who can't reproduce your problem."
Everybody is skirting the simple and fundamental truth: without sufficient freedom (i.e., with no alternative to corporate lock-up of tools and resources), innovation simply would not happen. So trying to artificially separate the two is just nonsense. Without any competition, there is virtually no motivation to innovate.
Innovation comes from motivation (which often means competition). If there is no competition, there is no motivation, and innovation simply doesn't happen.
I mean, Jesus Christ, America. We can see it happening right now in China. They were shit in the world economy (and their own economy, for that matter) until the government started letting businesses actually profit and compete with others (i.e., more capitalism). All while America has become more Corporatist (Mussolini's "fascism"), meaning less competition, less capitalism, etc. and our own economy has suffered entirely predictable downturns as a result.
"Pretty much, we spend more money on HC in america than any other country yet our care is no where near good by any stretch of the imagination."
BULLSHIT
We spend more on insurance than others spend on health care, and we get less health care in exchange.
This is the fundamental mental leap that too many Americans have failed to make. Insurance does not equal health care. And therefore, an increase in insurance, and even higher rates (Obamacare) is doomed to worsen the problem, not make it better.
"If everyone runs their own Tor exit node, including unknowingly every dumb Windows and Mac user out there, then malware writers (the NSA?) would have a field day writing bad stuff that attacks and takes advantage of a very large number of exit nodes. So which is better: fewer exit nodes but a few known bad ones as it is now, or shitloads of exit nodes where the vast majority cannot be trusted? All it would take is one major outbreak to basically destroy Tor's purpose..."
This is not a real concern. It would be ridiculously easy for independent malware checkers to detect this.
Not to mention that it is highly illegal for the government to do that. Regardless of the recent revelations that they DID do that... it's still illegal. Than can be and are being sued over it.
"Exploit based, I assume? I haven't had to rely on that, although if you don't have to unlock the bootloader it's a better way to go."
Yes, pretty simple. It was a matter of turning on USB debugging, connecting to my computer via USB, and running a script. It took all of about 30 seconds from start to finish.
There is so much MORE in stock Android that collects your data, in addition to Google Play.
There is the media player. The dialer and contacts manager. Maps. Search. Etc.
With Cyanogen, you can just run those things when you want to, or IF you want to... because there are lots of alternatives. I run search via my Firefox browser. For voice command I use Dragon. I use MX Player for media. And so on. No need for a single Google app except Play, which is really just a convenience.
"I have yet to opt-in to Google+. Android still works."
It isn't just Android. They've been doing it with all their services. And if you use any of those services: maps, search, etc., you will either be bugged to join up, or you have an internal account ID with Google, whether you "signed up" or not. Believe it.
"The author doesn't seem to understand how Bitcoin works. He seems to think that some mysterious computer programmer is the "issuer" of the currency. He says that governments will "take control", without explaining any mechanism for them to do so. His grasp of economics is questionable as well. He says that governments have always controlled currency. But prior to the American Civil War, private currency circulated."
Precisely. This "economist" is completely ignorant of history... which means he isn't much of an economist.
When private money circulated, the economy did better than when it involved central-bank-issued "fiat" money.
So, to put it in a nutshell: this guy is full of shit, but he's too ignorant to realize he's full of shit. Isn't that the definition of Dunning-Kruger?
The thing is, though, without all the bloatware that Google puts in "stock" Android, Google doesn't get all the user data they normally would. Especially now that they've forced everybody into Google+.
"There's nothing wrong with self-selection. The OISM petition is how we know there isn't a scientific consensus about CAGW, and all the names on it are self-selected. Whose side are you on, anyway?"
To clarify the problem here, I will say: the difference is, that people can "self-select" when THEY want to make a point, and that does not necessarily represent bias.
But when someone else is conducting a study, self-selection represents bias in the study, and invalidates the results.
"There's nothing wrong with self-selection. The OISM petition is how we know there isn't a scientific consensus about CAGW, and all the names on it are self-selected. Whose side are you on, anyway?"
I'm not on anybody's side about this. There is something wrong with self-selection when you're doing a study to find correlations, because it can skew the results. In fact it's one of the classic forms of bias in studies that are mentioned in the book "How To Lie With Statistics".
An example in the book is: magazine X publishes a study showing that graduates of Yale make $$$ salary in a year (the example was several times the median U.S. income at the time). How is this study (really a poll) biased?
Well, it's an example of self-selection. People who were well-off probably had more time to fill out survey forms. And people who were less well off probably didn't want to admit how little they make... so they didn't send back the survey forms. Or they lied.
That's one way self-selection can create bias. It doesn't always do that, but whenever there is much potential for self-selection in a study, survey, or poll, it should be taken with a grain of salt, and looked at with suspicion.
Slashdot Mirror
"I love it when people are trying to say that monopoly is not the goal of capitalism. Every firms goal in the free market is to dominate the whole market. Not to create the best product, or provide competition, but to earn the most money, and the best way to do that is a monopoly."
Congratulations. You've won the "Didn't Read What The Other Person Just Wrote" award.
You DO know that Adam Smith is the person who defined capitalism, yes?
" But for some stupid reason, a lot of curmudgeons would rather we stick with 30-year-old technology that doesn't work half as well as what Microsoft has been using for ages and wasn't designed for modern use cases."
That "stupid reason" is that others want it to be an open process and not have decisions about it unilaterally forced upon them by the giant, unfriendly gorilla in the room.
Is there something about that you find hard to understand?
"I'm glad you agree the art study would still be valid even if it only reported the students who improved after visiting the museum, and never reported the number who didn't improve."
That isn't what I wrote, either. Frankly, I don't understand where you are getting these ideas, and I'm starting to get a bit peeved that you're trying to attribute them to me.
"Come on You capitalist crusaders, let's see a little smoke. If what you believe is true (that lack of competition is the source of lack of innovation), go and create competition to The Big Government, and may the best person win. I'm sure they will try to innovate a solution, and not act like a capitalist -- that is smack You down with its unfairly distributed power."
You have obviously never read Adam Smith. Or if you did, you didn't understand it.
Even Smith knew that capitalism would require anti-trust regulation, and he stated as much quite clearly. Monopoly, or its friends "corporatism" and its alias "Crony Capitalism" are not actual capitalism, at all. They are, quite exactly, what Mussolini described when he defined the term "Fascism".
"Competition motivates (or rather drives) innovation -- it does so by putting a cost on lack of innovation."
This was a big part of my point.
" A person in a desert, while being completely alone, is encouraged to innovate by sheer forces of physics. A virus threatening our species survival would encourage innovation in a country based on capitalism or communism. Or probably any other system, maybe with the exception of theocracy."
The problem with your speech here is that you are postulating only scenarios that foster innovation. Monopoly and oligopoly actively suppress innovation, because any freedom- or competition-leaning change in the status quo threatens their hold on the market.
"The funny thing is, the laws that You are so adamantly trying to overturn are usually in place to try and protect small firms from larger ones"
And what laws would those be? It's funny, because I haven't mentioned anything of the sort. Though I could, if you want to go there. But don't make assumptions about what I'd say, because you would very likely be wrong.
"The Americas predicament is the result of its hubris as a worlds superpower. "
This isn't "The Americas" predicament. What a foolish thing to say. It may be what certain politicians are trying to do, but if you think they have the support of The American People (North or South) in doing it, you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground.
The predicament of "The Americas" is precisely that their governments are not doing what their people want. That situation will not last forever. But I will repeat: if you make the mistake of thinking that what our governments have been doing represent "the will of the people", you had better start re-thinking a few things.
I'd say "Mod Parent Up", if parent could be modded up any more.
I feel the same way, here in the U.S.
People should not mistake the bonehead, self-destructive, asshole things my government does with MY wishes. Those are very, very different things.
"I said the Play Suite, not Google Play, idiot."
The industry calls those Google Apps (gapps), not "Play Suite", because most of them have nothing to do with Play. Moron.
"This means that the near-infra-red emitters and camera have become so cheap as to be mass marketable. Hold off for six or so months before buying a vein finder for medical use, you could save 90% on the price ... or maybe the next generation of smart phones will support this?"
There is ZERO new here on the hardware end. The hardware has been capable for more than 10 years (some video cameras took advantage of this near-infrared sensitivity of CMOS sensors by offering a "night mode".)
The only difference is that some people are finally figuring out ways to exploit it.
"90% of everything is crap, but at least with open source you can find out why instead of waiting for the developers who can't reproduce your problem."
Everybody is skirting the simple and fundamental truth: without sufficient freedom (i.e., with no alternative to corporate lock-up of tools and resources), innovation simply would not happen. So trying to artificially separate the two is just nonsense. Without any competition, there is virtually no motivation to innovate.
Innovation comes from motivation (which often means competition). If there is no competition, there is no motivation, and innovation simply doesn't happen.
I mean, Jesus Christ, America. We can see it happening right now in China. They were shit in the world economy (and their own economy, for that matter) until the government started letting businesses actually profit and compete with others (i.e., more capitalism). All while America has become more Corporatist (Mussolini's "fascism"), meaning less competition, less capitalism, etc. and our own economy has suffered entirely predictable downturns as a result.
What does it take to wake people up?
"Pretty much, we spend more money on HC in america than any other country yet our care is no where near good by any stretch of the imagination."
BULLSHIT
We spend more on insurance than others spend on health care, and we get less health care in exchange.
This is the fundamental mental leap that too many Americans have failed to make. Insurance does not equal health care. And therefore, an increase in insurance, and even higher rates (Obamacare) is doomed to worsen the problem, not make it better.
"centre vs center"
The American spellings are (1) more logically consistent, (2) more phonetic, and (3) almost 200 years old.
If you want to continue living in the ancient past, go right ahead. Don't bitch about those who want to move on.
"...a dead man's paranoiac death wishes about publication."
It's called a contract. It has legal force. What is your problem with this?
It might be a strange contract, but it's still a contract.
"If everyone runs their own Tor exit node, including unknowingly every dumb Windows and Mac user out there, then malware writers (the NSA?) would have a field day writing bad stuff that attacks and takes advantage of a very large number of exit nodes. So which is better: fewer exit nodes but a few known bad ones as it is now, or shitloads of exit nodes where the vast majority cannot be trusted? All it would take is one major outbreak to basically destroy Tor's purpose..."
This is not a real concern. It would be ridiculously easy for independent malware checkers to detect this.
Not to mention that it is highly illegal for the government to do that. Regardless of the recent revelations that they DID do that... it's still illegal. Than can be and are being sued over it.
"Or let me ask differently: How would you fix it? A web of trusted exit nodes run by the government of choice? :P"
No. Everybody here is missing the point.
If/when exit nodes are everywhere, hosted by everybody, two things happen:
(A) It becomes impractical to the point of impossibility to monitor all the exit nodes, and at the same time
(B) the VALUE of monitoring any given exit node is diluted far past the point of making it worth anybody's time.
I'm not sure where you got that idea, but it isn't what I wrote.
"Exploit based, I assume? I haven't had to rely on that, although if you don't have to unlock the bootloader it's a better way to go."
Yes, pretty simple. It was a matter of turning on USB debugging, connecting to my computer via USB, and running a script. It took all of about 30 seconds from start to finish.
There is so much MORE in stock Android that collects your data, in addition to Google Play.
There is the media player. The dialer and contacts manager. Maps. Search. Etc.
With Cyanogen, you can just run those things when you want to, or IF you want to... because there are lots of alternatives. I run search via my Firefox browser. For voice command I use Dragon. I use MX Player for media. And so on. No need for a single Google app except Play, which is really just a convenience.
"I have yet to opt-in to Google+. Android still works."
It isn't just Android. They've been doing it with all their services. And if you use any of those services: maps, search, etc., you will either be bugged to join up, or you have an internal account ID with Google, whether you "signed up" or not. Believe it.
"You got that right. Once again, protecting our freedom by pissing it away."
Note to UK government: censorship never works. It never has, it never will. All it does is foment rebellion.
"The author doesn't seem to understand how Bitcoin works. He seems to think that some mysterious computer programmer is the "issuer" of the currency. He says that governments will "take control", without explaining any mechanism for them to do so. His grasp of economics is questionable as well. He says that governments have always controlled currency. But prior to the American Civil War, private currency circulated."
Precisely. This "economist" is completely ignorant of history... which means he isn't much of an economist.
When private money circulated, the economy did better than when it involved central-bank-issued "fiat" money.
So, to put it in a nutshell: this guy is full of shit, but he's too ignorant to realize he's full of shit. Isn't that the definition of Dunning-Kruger?
"All your analogies to "walking off the plantation" do is highlight that you have absolutely no sense of perspective on this matter. "
WHOOSH
GP was referring to the user data that "stock" Android collects for Google, as opposed to Cyanogenmod, which by itself collects none.
That's interesting, because it's not "standard".
Usually, rooting and unlocking the bootloader are two separate issues. My phone was rooted for a long time before I unlocked the bootloader.
Or anterior motives even. :o)
The thing is, though, without all the bloatware that Google puts in "stock" Android, Google doesn't get all the user data they normally would. Especially now that they've forced everybody into Google+.
"There's nothing wrong with self-selection. The OISM petition is how we know there isn't a scientific consensus about CAGW, and all the names on it are self-selected. Whose side are you on, anyway?"
To clarify the problem here, I will say: the difference is, that people can "self-select" when THEY want to make a point, and that does not necessarily represent bias.
But when someone else is conducting a study, self-selection represents bias in the study, and invalidates the results.
"There's nothing wrong with self-selection. The OISM petition is how we know there isn't a scientific consensus about CAGW, and all the names on it are self-selected. Whose side are you on, anyway?"
I'm not on anybody's side about this. There is something wrong with self-selection when you're doing a study to find correlations, because it can skew the results. In fact it's one of the classic forms of bias in studies that are mentioned in the book "How To Lie With Statistics".
An example in the book is: magazine X publishes a study showing that graduates of Yale make $$$ salary in a year (the example was several times the median U.S. income at the time). How is this study (really a poll) biased?
Well, it's an example of self-selection. People who were well-off probably had more time to fill out survey forms. And people who were less well off probably didn't want to admit how little they make... so they didn't send back the survey forms. Or they lied.
That's one way self-selection can create bias. It doesn't always do that, but whenever there is much potential for self-selection in a study, survey, or poll, it should be taken with a grain of salt, and looked at with suspicion.