Obviously, we do not have the said ideal circumstances.
No argument there.
It is not necessarily the case that the value function of the optimizer is exactly what we want. For instance, the free market doesn't care if disabled people die, but we do.
I disagree with this. The free market is a collection of individually acting humans, and optimizes for the values of those humans. If "WE" care about disabled people, so will the market. I suspect it's simply the case that "WE" as a collective do not care as much as "WE" the individual claim to. Although, there seems to be strong evidence that the more free the economy, the greater the rate of charitable giving. Compare US vs EU, and then EU to, say, the Middle East or China.
Even if the free market can be proven to reach optimum eventually, this says nothing about the convergence rate. And given that the premisses (such as the technology level) aren't static, we are chasing a moving target, which means convergence rate matters.
True, although the question about convergence needs to be stated in the context of relative rates. In other words... I certainly wouldn't trust mixed-markets to adapt faster.
The free market is a simple consequence of individual freedom. Just as free speech is good and right, but there may need to be some regulation on edge cases, the free market is good and right, with regulation needed only on extremes. In both cases, the less regulation the better. Capitalism generally leads to a better standard of living than other economic system, but that's not why I support it; I support it because it's the only ethical economic system. The only economic system based on freedom and personal choice.
A great many of those barriers, though, exist only because of government regulation of the market. In a free market, politicians couldn't be lobbied to pass rules to support one company or another; politicians simply wouldn't have the power.
I think there's strong cultural behavioral differences between the two.
Anyway, though, I agree with your statement about the difficulty in getting them to abide by licensing. It's not just them, though; it's a problem with most societies outside of North America and the EU (and Japan, Australia, Israel, etc.). I don't think they're as concerned with legal niceties.
You don't agree to the GPL license to use or modify a GPL product. It is only concerned with redistribution, which would be blatantly illegal without the GPL.
True; but if you just equated games to sports, than RPGs would be a sport as well. As would chess. Either way, the GP was just making a juvenile "My favorite genre is awesome, your favorite genre is dumb" comment.
My understanding is that in much of the EU, items cannot legally be sold without a rating; and there have been cases of items that are refused a rating. That would make it truly censorship.
I doubt I'd buy music from them any more than I would from the iTunes store... but if they are going to come out with some music and media management software to compete with the iTune software, I'd be very interested. Every one I've tried, ESPECIALLY iTunes, has been crap... so I'm still organizing all my music in standard file directories and text editing playlists in notepad.
My second thought is... surely Google would be more receptive to indie and non-professional artists?
Last three presidential elections? There's really no chance that voting machines could have influenced the outcome.
Now, maybe one of the last two local or congressional races might have been close enough... but those sorts of shenanigans go on with or without voting machines. Look at the way the current governor of Washington won her seat, if you want to be outraged at manipulation of election results.
Yes, it's a bad idea, at least in all the ways it's been implemented so far. However, it's a bad idea even just considering the incompetence of the voting software suppliers. I'm still skeptical that Sequoia or Deibold are purposefully trying to manipulate elections.
Inadvertently and recklessly manipulating elections, I would agree with. Trying to cover their ass, definitely. Criminal? Yeah, maybe; that level of incompetence shouldn't be allowed to touch our election process.
36,000 people die from the flu and that's in a vaccinated populace. Without vaccines it would be in the hundreds of thousands.
That's a pretty high mortality rate in my book.
Do you have a source? Not about the deaths from flu; you're right, thousands die every year. But about the hypothetical 'without vaccines' scenario. Keep in mind the vast majority of the population, even in the US, never receives a flu vaccine.
...and also the microsoft logo so they can sue you for copying it...
That's not the case. Sega tried that, and it didn't hold up in court. Of course, they can still sue you for numerous reasons, if you do this; just not that.
I could imprison and/or kill you because I find your actions offensive. And if it weren't for my own innate sense of morality, the government would be the only entity with the ability and the authority to stop me.
Is my refusal to stay in your basement when you demand it the same as my refusual to go to jail when the government demands it? No, and not just because the government is bigger. It is qualitatively different. I can be killed by an individual, a company, a religion, or a government. I don't disagree with you there; they ALL have the power to imprison and kill me. However, it is only the government that we entrust with the LEGAL power to do so. Because we entrust it with abilities that no other group is allowed to have, we should trust it the least.
You are not quite getting it. But that is understandable, as this is quite a commonly misunderstood part of information theory.
No; rather, it is a way in which information theory has different definitions than normal use. The poster is using the English definition of compression, and you are using a more technical definition that is part of a specific field's jargon. Since this is an English discussion, I think the above poster can be reasonably viewed as correct.
The important isn't necessarily which kind of social institution you're bringing to bear on a problem, it's whether or not it's adaptable and accountable to the people it touches.
I disagree, because there are powers invested in government that aren't invested in any other organization. The government may make my actions illegal, imprison, and/or kill me. Other organizations can't, unless the government gives them the allowance to do so. Therefore, the government is the group that most critically requires limitation.
(By the way, I just metamoded, and your comment popped up. I gave it a thumbs up.)
It is absurd. We also voted to require that chickens have enough room to walk around when they're being raised to be killed and eaten, but we voted against allowing same sex marriage. We care more about animals than gay people, strangely enough.
That doesn't really logically follow. I'm sure most Californians wouldn't vote to confine gays to a lifetime in a small cage, and wouldn't vote to allow chickens to marry.
No, it should be between the seller and the customer. The ability to act irresponsibly is often the price of living in a free society. Feel free to condemn them, though. I'll back you up with that; purchasing low mileage cars can be a stupid decision.
There is nothing so important that you have to talk on the phone in the car while driving.
That's a silly thing to say. If you said that there was almost never a reason to talk on the phone while driving, I'd agree. That's like saying there's never a reason to speed... you would be absolutely correct, 99% of the time; but when you need to, you need to, despite a slightly increased risk.
There are hands-free headsets, and using one is no more of a distraction than talking to someone that is in the car with you.
That's not true, and is one of the dangers of the legislation so many states are implementing against cell phones. Tests have shown that hands-free cell phones are nearly as bad as holding a cellphone, and far worse than conversing with another individual in the car. The problem seems to be more distraction, than the physical act of holding a cell-phone.
An individual in the car with you will react to your body language and the external environment, and SHUT UP when the situation demands it, whereas the person on the other end of the phone will yammer away all the way up to your death.
Right. This proves that government would be the solution if we had absolutely superhuman, omniscient lawmakers. When that happens, I'll gladly support them. Until then, the less power they have, the better.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously, we do not have the said ideal circumstances.
No argument there.
It is not necessarily the case that the value function of the optimizer is exactly what we want. For instance, the free market doesn't care if disabled people die, but we do.
I disagree with this. The free market is a collection of individually acting humans, and optimizes for the values of those humans. If "WE" care about disabled people, so will the market. I suspect it's simply the case that "WE" as a collective do not care as much as "WE" the individual claim to. Although, there seems to be strong evidence that the more free the economy, the greater the rate of charitable giving. Compare US vs EU, and then EU to, say, the Middle East or China.
Even if the free market can be proven to reach optimum eventually, this says nothing about the convergence rate. And given that the premisses (such as the technology level) aren't static, we are chasing a moving target, which means convergence rate matters.
True, although the question about convergence needs to be stated in the context of relative rates. In other words... I certainly wouldn't trust mixed-markets to adapt faster.
Marxism is more realistic.
Despite evidence?
The free market is a simple consequence of individual freedom. Just as free speech is good and right, but there may need to be some regulation on edge cases, the free market is good and right, with regulation needed only on extremes. In both cases, the less regulation the better. Capitalism generally leads to a better standard of living than other economic system, but that's not why I support it; I support it because it's the only ethical economic system. The only economic system based on freedom and personal choice.
A great many of those barriers, though, exist only because of government regulation of the market. In a free market, politicians couldn't be lobbied to pass rules to support one company or another; politicians simply wouldn't have the power.
Chinese (Taiwanese, same thing)
I think there's strong cultural behavioral differences between the two.
Anyway, though, I agree with your statement about the difficulty in getting them to abide by licensing. It's not just them, though; it's a problem with most societies outside of North America and the EU (and Japan, Australia, Israel, etc.). I don't think they're as concerned with legal niceties.
You don't agree to the GPL license to use or modify a GPL product. It is only concerned with redistribution, which would be blatantly illegal without the GPL.
True; but if you just equated games to sports, than RPGs would be a sport as well. As would chess. Either way, the GP was just making a juvenile "My favorite genre is awesome, your favorite genre is dumb" comment.
Shouldn't they have that right? If I develop something and license it under GPLv2, I should be able to decline to ever relicense it to GPLv3.
My understanding is that in much of the EU, items cannot legally be sold without a rating; and there have been cases of items that are refused a rating. That would make it truly censorship.
Or am I getting the EU confused with Australia?
I doubt I'd buy music from them any more than I would from the iTunes store... but if they are going to come out with some music and media management software to compete with the iTune software, I'd be very interested. Every one I've tried, ESPECIALLY iTunes, has been crap... so I'm still organizing all my music in standard file directories and text editing playlists in notepad.
My second thought is... surely Google would be more receptive to indie and non-professional artists?
Playing an FPS is like being an athelete. Playing an RPG is like being a sports fan.
Better analogy: Playing an FPS is like playing ping pong. Playing an RPG is like reading a book. Don't be too full of yourself.
Last three presidential elections? There's really no chance that voting machines could have influenced the outcome.
Now, maybe one of the last two local or congressional races might have been close enough... but those sorts of shenanigans go on with or without voting machines. Look at the way the current governor of Washington won her seat, if you want to be outraged at manipulation of election results.
Yes, it's a bad idea, at least in all the ways it's been implemented so far. However, it's a bad idea even just considering the incompetence of the voting software suppliers. I'm still skeptical that Sequoia or Deibold are purposefully trying to manipulate elections.
Inadvertently and recklessly manipulating elections, I would agree with. Trying to cover their ass, definitely. Criminal? Yeah, maybe; that level of incompetence shouldn't be allowed to touch our election process.
What's wrong with that? It actually sounds like a reasonable behavior for most digital goods... ebooks, music, games, etc.
36,000 people die from the flu and that's in a vaccinated populace. Without vaccines it would be in the hundreds of thousands. That's a pretty high mortality rate in my book.
Do you have a source? Not about the deaths from flu; you're right, thousands die every year. But about the hypothetical 'without vaccines' scenario. Keep in mind the vast majority of the population, even in the US, never receives a flu vaccine.
...and also the microsoft logo so they can sue you for copying it...
That's not the case. Sega tried that, and it didn't hold up in court. Of course, they can still sue you for numerous reasons, if you do this; just not that.
I could imprison and/or kill you because I find your actions offensive. And if it weren't for my own innate sense of morality, the government would be the only entity with the ability and the authority to stop me.
Is my refusal to stay in your basement when you demand it the same as my refusual to go to jail when the government demands it? No, and not just because the government is bigger. It is qualitatively different. I can be killed by an individual, a company, a religion, or a government. I don't disagree with you there; they ALL have the power to imprison and kill me. However, it is only the government that we entrust with the LEGAL power to do so. Because we entrust it with abilities that no other group is allowed to have, we should trust it the least.
retailers see it as this year's Speed Racer
I will be thrilled if this is as good as Speed Racer. That is a criminally underrated movie.
You are not quite getting it. But that is understandable, as this is quite a commonly misunderstood part of information theory.
No; rather, it is a way in which information theory has different definitions than normal use. The poster is using the English definition of compression, and you are using a more technical definition that is part of a specific field's jargon. Since this is an English discussion, I think the above poster can be reasonably viewed as correct.
The important isn't necessarily which kind of social institution you're bringing to bear on a problem, it's whether or not it's adaptable and accountable to the people it touches.
I disagree, because there are powers invested in government that aren't invested in any other organization. The government may make my actions illegal, imprison, and/or kill me. Other organizations can't, unless the government gives them the allowance to do so. Therefore, the government is the group that most critically requires limitation.
(By the way, I just metamoded, and your comment popped up. I gave it a thumbs up.)
It is absurd. We also voted to require that chickens have enough room to walk around when they're being raised to be killed and eaten, but we voted against allowing same sex marriage. We care more about animals than gay people, strangely enough.
That doesn't really logically follow. I'm sure most Californians wouldn't vote to confine gays to a lifetime in a small cage, and wouldn't vote to allow chickens to marry.
No, it should be between the seller and the customer. The ability to act irresponsibly is often the price of living in a free society. Feel free to condemn them, though. I'll back you up with that; purchasing low mileage cars can be a stupid decision.
There is nothing so important that you have to talk on the phone in the car while driving.
That's a silly thing to say. If you said that there was almost never a reason to talk on the phone while driving, I'd agree. That's like saying there's never a reason to speed... you would be absolutely correct, 99% of the time; but when you need to, you need to, despite a slightly increased risk.
There are hands-free headsets, and using one is no more of a distraction than talking to someone that is in the car with you.
That's not true, and is one of the dangers of the legislation so many states are implementing against cell phones. Tests have shown that hands-free cell phones are nearly as bad as holding a cellphone, and far worse than conversing with another individual in the car. The problem seems to be more distraction, than the physical act of holding a cell-phone.
An individual in the car with you will react to your body language and the external environment, and SHUT UP when the situation demands it, whereas the person on the other end of the phone will yammer away all the way up to your death.
Probably never, for a Jeep. I don't think it has enough of a streamline for open windows to noticeably disrupt.
Right. This proves that government would be the solution if we had absolutely superhuman, omniscient lawmakers. When that happens, I'll gladly support them. Until then, the less power they have, the better.