No, I didn't know that. Who was selling a monolithic tablet with WiFi, an XGA display with capacitive multitouch, and 8+ hour battery life, before Apple? You can point to vaporware like the CrunchPad, but nobody had ever successfully tackled the problems associated with tablet computing at the platform level.
Doctors have used portable touchscreen devices for a long time, but they've historically been saddled with things like Fujitsu Lifebook PCs running god-awful Pen Windows hackery.
I don't think you can wave your hands and make the question vanish in a puff of logic like that. What's the purpose of any type of political speech, if not persuasion?
I had to check the page source to see how they had managed to launch a Flash application without being caught by my FlashBlock plugin. Applications like this are another nail in Adobe's coffin.
According to the study you are more likely to die from any cause because you were prescribed sleeping pills. Therefore the act of receiving a prescription somehow increases your risk of heart disease, cancer, etc. They also state that statistically these patients did not already have disease when the experiment was begun.
I don't see anything that can't be explained by the simple fact that older people often have trouble sleeping, and are more likely to take sleeping pills. Ever see anyone under 50 in a Sominex commercial?
This is just part of the Republican Party's unconscious effort to self-destruct.
I'm not sure it's unconscious. I think they may be running a longer game. When McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, I couldn't help wondering if he was deliberately throwing the 2008 election to Obama. Perhaps he saw the biggest economic shitstorm since the Depression approaching, and knew that it would be blamed on whoever was in office.
If the GOP actually nominates Santorum, this will no longer be an unlikely-sounding conspiracy theory, but an irrefutable fact. It will mean that the Republicans are absolutely terrified of something that they're reasonably certain will happen in the next four years, and that they don't want anyone from their party in the Oval Office when it does.
I'm not going to vote for Obama again, either way, but I'm glad I'm not in his shoes.
But of course, anyone suggesting smaller government in either nation is painted as a lunatic-fringe extremist that hates the poor, and is probably a racist to boot.
E.g., "Derp, herp, why dontcha just move to Somalia if you want a libertarian paradise, herp, derp"
You don't understand economics, and you don't understand the German employment system
Oh, OK. That would explain a great deal of my confusion of late, come to think of it.
I think the Germans would say that the employers who abandon their workers during the next economic turndown are the freeloaders.
Let's just agree to come back to this thread in forty or fifty years, and see how it's worked out. The problem with the system you describe is that like the insanely-generous pension plans negotiated by the UAW in America, it really only works for the limited number of workers who are already set for life. It doesn't scale very well, as various European welfare states are already in the process of discovering. And it also depends on the Germans being able to sell their BMWs, Porsches, or even VWs at much higher prices than those commanded by typical Detroit iron.
To coin a computer analogy, it's almost as if the most generous benefits offered by Microsoft and Google were mandated for every tech startup in the US. How much genuine innovation are you going to see, after that happens? What happens when five hundred million not-so-Red Chinese decide to compete in your market? You'd better hope you work for your industry's own Porsche, Mercedes, or BMW, because otherwise you're going to need that government-guaranteed job for life very badly.
Again, we'll see how sustainable that is. The money has to come from somewhere. It either comes from the automaker's pockets -- which apparently isn't the case since they're so profitable -- or indirectly through government subsidies, which are only "free" in the sense that their true cost is hidden by robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Don't get me wrong -- I, for one, hope they succeed in giving everyone money for nothing, because that will mean that some seemingly-intractable economic problems have been solved. Scarcity should be thought of as a bug, not a feature... and if the Germans have fixed the bug, then hey, sign me up for the patch.
Your post is a bit short on specifics. What do the jobs entail? If "what unions do" involves forcing the rest of society to pay $67/hour for a monkey with a torque wrench, I think we'll be fine without them, thanks.
Time will tell if that kind of bullshit is any more sustainable in Germany than it was in Detroit. I'm guessing not.
What is relevant now might not be relevant later. But I know a few HR drones who wouldn't distinguish between me now and me 10 years ago.
The best solution to this problem being to let everybody embarrass themselves. When everybody looks like an drunk-ass moron on Facebook, employers won't be able to use those photos to discriminate against perfectly qualified applicants.
But hey, if the EU wants to plunge themselves into the IT Dark Ages, let 'em.
Well, speaking only for myself, my first thought was "Wow, I wish I could drop $100K on a whim."
Well, start the next Google and you, too, can do that.
Personally, I'm not exactly concerned about the environmental impact caused by the number of people who can afford to burn $100,000 worth of fuel per day. Notice that the grandparent poster doesn't mention the much worse effects of a billion not-so-Red Chinese who will soon be driving their own cars and SUVs. That's because it wouldn't give him the same eco-hipster "Occupy Earth" street cred as he could get by directing an equivalent amount of criticism at a couple of rich dudes riding around in a Gulfstream.
Slashdot Mirror
why there was no industrial revolution after Ancient Greece since they had steam engines [wikipedia.org]
Because it turns out that it's not that big of a deal if your slaves die of exhaustion. There are plenty more where they came from.
No, I didn't know that. Who was selling a monolithic tablet with WiFi, an XGA display with capacitive multitouch, and 8+ hour battery life, before Apple? You can point to vaporware like the CrunchPad, but nobody had ever successfully tackled the problems associated with tablet computing at the platform level.
Doctors have used portable touchscreen devices for a long time, but they've historically been saddled with things like Fujitsu Lifebook PCs running god-awful Pen Windows hackery.
Do you think the Kindle Fire would exist in a form usable by medical personnel if it weren't for the iPad?
I don't think you can wave your hands and make the question vanish in a puff of logic like that. What's the purpose of any type of political speech, if not persuasion?
simply lumping money (a zero-sum transaction)
Do you actually know what that term means?
The second is that vetoes often expend political capital.
The only "political capital" that should matter is the elected official's "political capital" with the people who elected him.
Everything you wrote is basically Nuremberg thinking in action.
Why use Falstad instead of LTSpice?
I actually thought that was pretty clever. By ramping up his "war on religion" right now, Obama did, indeed, energize Santorum's base.
Santorum would have dropped out of the race by now if he hadn't been propped up by Obama.
I had to check the page source to see how they had managed to launch a Flash application without being caught by my FlashBlock plugin. Applications like this are another nail in Adobe's coffin.
According to the study you are more likely to die from any cause because you were prescribed sleeping pills. Therefore the act of receiving a prescription somehow increases your risk of heart disease, cancer, etc. They also state that statistically these patients did not already have disease when the experiment was begun.
I don't see anything that can't be explained by the simple fact that older people often have trouble sleeping, and are more likely to take sleeping pills. Ever see anyone under 50 in a Sominex commercial?
This is just part of the Republican Party's unconscious effort to self-destruct.
I'm not sure it's unconscious. I think they may be running a longer game. When McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, I couldn't help wondering if he was deliberately throwing the 2008 election to Obama. Perhaps he saw the biggest economic shitstorm since the Depression approaching, and knew that it would be blamed on whoever was in office.
If the GOP actually nominates Santorum, this will no longer be an unlikely-sounding conspiracy theory, but an irrefutable fact. It will mean that the Republicans are absolutely terrified of something that they're reasonably certain will happen in the next four years, and that they don't want anyone from their party in the Oval Office when it does.
I'm not going to vote for Obama again, either way, but I'm glad I'm not in his shoes.
When you legalize a good that people will break laws to get the money to pay for, you may cause more crime than you prevent.
And I'm sure you'll be able to cite at least one instance of this actually happening.
But of course, anyone suggesting smaller government in either nation is painted as a lunatic-fringe extremist that hates the poor, and is probably a racist to boot.
E.g., "Derp, herp, why dontcha just move to Somalia if you want a libertarian paradise, herp, derp"
You don't understand economics, and you don't understand the German employment system
Oh, OK. That would explain a great deal of my confusion of late, come to think of it.
I think the Germans would say that the employers who abandon their workers during the next economic turndown are the freeloaders.
Let's just agree to come back to this thread in forty or fifty years, and see how it's worked out. The problem with the system you describe is that like the insanely-generous pension plans negotiated by the UAW in America, it really only works for the limited number of workers who are already set for life. It doesn't scale very well, as various European welfare states are already in the process of discovering. And it also depends on the Germans being able to sell their BMWs, Porsches, or even VWs at much higher prices than those commanded by typical Detroit iron.
To coin a computer analogy, it's almost as if the most generous benefits offered by Microsoft and Google were mandated for every tech startup in the US. How much genuine innovation are you going to see, after that happens? What happens when five hundred million not-so-Red Chinese decide to compete in your market? You'd better hope you work for your industry's own Porsche, Mercedes, or BMW, because otherwise you're going to need that government-guaranteed job for life very badly.
Not that big of a deal
Again, we'll see how sustainable that is. The money has to come from somewhere. It either comes from the automaker's pockets -- which apparently isn't the case since they're so profitable -- or indirectly through government subsidies, which are only "free" in the sense that their true cost is hidden by robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Don't get me wrong -- I, for one, hope they succeed in giving everyone money for nothing, because that will mean that some seemingly-intractable economic problems have been solved. Scarcity should be thought of as a bug, not a feature... and if the Germans have fixed the bug, then hey, sign me up for the patch.
Gee, it's almost as if you can treat your workers better and pay them more when you're not forced to keep thousands of goldbrickers on the payroll.
Your post is a bit short on specifics. What do the jobs entail? If "what unions do" involves forcing the rest of society to pay $67/hour for a monkey with a torque wrench, I think we'll be fine without them, thanks.
Time will tell if that kind of bullshit is any more sustainable in Germany than it was in Detroit. I'm guessing not.
We have, and do. For the vast majority of them, there predictions have been pretty good, overall.
Unfortunately, I need more than "pretty good, overall" before agreeing to trillions of dollars in economic rewiring and redistribution.
Yes, but when have the Protocols of the Elders of Zion ever actually predicted anything?
Just don't ask the same question about climate models.
Sounds like the sort of brilliant strategic thinking that predicted Viet Nam would be a cakewalk.
What is relevant now might not be relevant later. But I know a few HR drones who wouldn't distinguish between me now and me 10 years ago.
The best solution to this problem being to let everybody embarrass themselves. When everybody looks like an drunk-ass moron on Facebook, employers won't be able to use those photos to discriminate against perfectly qualified applicants.
But hey, if the EU wants to plunge themselves into the IT Dark Ages, let 'em.
Simply moving the pollution from one place to another is not being more environmentally friendly, it's called being short sighted.
So I'm assuming you're a big fan of compact fluorescent bulbs.
So what are you doing right now, besides burning electricity?
Well, speaking only for myself, my first thought was "Wow, I wish I could drop $100K on a whim."
Well, start the next Google and you, too, can do that.
Personally, I'm not exactly concerned about the environmental impact caused by the number of people who can afford to burn $100,000 worth of fuel per day. Notice that the grandparent poster doesn't mention the much worse effects of a billion not-so-Red Chinese who will soon be driving their own cars and SUVs. That's because it wouldn't give him the same eco-hipster "Occupy Earth" street cred as he could get by directing an equivalent amount of criticism at a couple of rich dudes riding around in a Gulfstream.
Pretty much. You'll get over it.