Okay, it actually looks dumber than the Powerglove. It's just an ergonomic keyboard! If you want that, why not just get yourself a Twiddler. At least that has some non gaming uses as well. Maybe if they threw in some BAT keyboard drivers (really neat chorded one-handed keyboard, with one key for each finger and 3 for the thumb) or something, then I could see buying this, but $50 for a dedicated gaming keyboard just seems silly.
Well, I guess I'll just have to do my best to imagine it. Um, someone want to clue me in on what it looks like? I can only assume it's not quite as dumb as the Powerglove for NES:)
Heh, reminds me of the time I took a knife to a floppy disk containing a word processing document containing garbage text, just so I'd be able to show the floppy to my instructor with an unopenable Word document. You'd be surprised how many cuts you have to make in order to corrupt that tiny 3K range on which the document is stored:)
Why don't CDs look like flopies? Who on earth decided that it would be a good idea to create a new media with no more protection than a millimeter thick plastic coating? If I had a nickel for every cd I've lost due to scratching, well, I guess I'd still be out a couple hundred bucks. And now DVDs are designed the same way, only the denser information means that they're even less forgiving of scratches! I own anime DVDs that cost on the order of $60 apiece, and I know that sooner or later they'll be scratched. A simple plastic case, a la floppy disks, would do wonders for their longevity. Was this another plot by the music and motion picture industries to screw us, or what?
If this gives the police the right to demand cryptographic keys, then encyption wouldn't help. You get a choice: give them the key and go to jail for warez distribution, or refuse and go to jail for obstruction of justice. Man, I can't wait for freenet to become usable (not that I'm a big fan of warez, but it would just be very satisfying for me to know that despite the laws passed, the FBI still can't control us).
Okay, let's suppose for the moment that we actually manage to get enough support to make this thing viable. What would our constitution say? (I assume you mean constitution and not declaration of independence, because a declaration is akin to a manifesto, while a constitution is a binding set of rules) I, for one, would want some basic protections, for example I wouldn't want someone creating a mirror of my site and then claiming credit. Other people, like you, may want no protectons. Still others might want more protections than me. Very soon, instead of creating one new internet, we'll be trying to create 10, each of which has maybe 100 users. It's a nice idea, but it probably would not work. Besides which, even if you did get it to work, by declaring that you will be unbound by national laws, even if you're not arrested, you certainly won't get any protection if black hats kill your site.
How ironic, given that this is/. The reason the Star Wars bit looks like a link, but is unclickable is this: <a href="http://games.lasers.org/images/asteroids.jpg ">Asteroids<a> That's really very disappointing, I think Star Wars would be the primary game I'd want to play. Oh well, maybe they'll get it working soon. Finally, the science museum near my house will be able to turn a profit off of that Laserium equipment:)
Libertarians don't support the Constitution because it's The Constitution, we support the Constitution because of its strong libertarian principles. So yes, of course the bits of the Constitution that are not libertarian we're not going to like. Yes, generally we do have a great degree of respect for the founding fathers, but they didn't write the later amendments, did they? Take the Eighteenth Amendment, which began Prohibition. That's obviously not a libertarian portion of the Constitution, and had it not been repealed, then we would oppose that too.
Libertarian beliefs are very simple: you are free to do whatever you want so long as it does not infringe upon others' right to do the same. The Constitution, conveniently, works very well with that, but that's a lucky coincidence, not a justification for Libertarianism.
Railroads, however, most certainly are excludable. Some people economists claim that there would be a market for private highways if the government opened things up, since most highways are also excludable (see toll roads if you need proof of this). Many of these things are under control not because there's no market, but because the government believes they are natural monopolies (meaning that due to the way the market is set up, one company will invariably rise to prominence; the OS industry may be a natural monopoly, because the larger the market share, the more software runs on it, and the more software that runs on it, the more its market share will increase), and therefore things will be better if the monopoly is under government control than if it were a private monopoly. Of course, the reality is that government monopolies are no more consumer friendly than privete ones, just the money is going to a large number of wasteful bureacrats instead of a small number of efficient executives. Decide for yourself which is the lesser evil:)
I didn't say amendements didn't count, I was pointing out that the earlier poster was correct: America did not have an income tax for the first 120 years of its existence. And generally speaking, the Libertarians support the original Constitution; that is, the Consititution plus the Bill of Rights. Since the Constitution was not ratified until the Bill of Rights was added, the first 10 amendments were a part of the Constitution before the Constitution became the law of the land. Obviously some later amendments (like women's sufferage) the Libertarians like, but the sixteenth is not among them.
No, money doesn't rot, but if you've got more than you're inclined to spend, and you can't pass it along to the next generation, then the result is the same. The only reason I used food as an example is to show why inheritance taxes lower incentive to work by using a one commodity system. My point though, is that a large inheritance tax is not the solution to unearned wealth. The solution is property tax. Sure, you could "avoid" the tax by living in a crappy house in a bad neighborhood, but what's the point in being rich then? An annual tax related to assets (a property tax being the easiest way to accomplish this), rather than an income tax or a one time tax (be it when you die, or on your 50th birthday) is the best way to prevent idle rich.
Sorry, but really, the computer graphics are notch below Riven (sure, Riven only had to render still images, or low res movies, but the standards for movies are lot higher than computer games), the choral singing during swordfighting was stolen directly from Highlander, as has been pointed out, the two good guys look like a racial stereotype paired up with a guy who has all the acting talent necessary for Power Rangers, and pastel blue lipstick is just stupid. The only good side is the Beholder, because Beholders are incredibly cool (they've got a hive/caste society, lots of eyes, and can kill you 15 ways without even touching you). I'm much more looking forward to LOTR.
The Libertarians aren't anarchists. You have no idea what you're talking about, do you? As an aside, wrt the Socialist/Big Brother comparison, remember that 1984 was written about "EngSoc..." (Eng being England, can anyone tell me what the Soc is for?)
then the government wouldn't need to subsidize a monopoly. Think about it, in any other industry, a company with monopoly power would be swimming in money, and would probably be broken up by the government. Yet Amtrak is not only NOT rich, they don't break even, they have to be given government money. This obviously shows that there is no market for rail transport, and the people who like it are a tiny minority. Forcing everyone else to pay for your train trips is downright ridiculous.
Because around the turn of the century the socialists stole the word "liberal," and for some reason it stuck, so the old liberals had to find themselves a new word. As for the corporate domination bit though, I've never understood this. Company can ever force you to buy a product. You don't like it, you're free to go ahead and grow your own food, or build your own televisions. You don't have the skills or equipment to manufacture a television? Well then be thankful there are corporations out there willing to give you television sets in exchange for nothing more than stacks of paper.
High inheritance taxes destroy any incentive to produce more wealth than you can consume. To take a simplified model, say you're a farmer in ancient times when about the only product available to farmers was food (and again, for simplicity, we'll assume that it really is the only product available). Now say that during the course of your life, you produce double the amount of food needed to sustain yourself. If you keep the food, it'll rot. If you sell it, what's the point? There's nothing you want to buy, because you're already well fed, and you can't pass it along to your kids. So, you'll only produce enough food for yourself, which is a net loss for society.
Now, make this a bit more general. Substitute "money" for food, and you've basically got modern society. If people can't pass it on to their kids, they've got no reason to try to make any more money than they plan to spend.
Another simpler argument is that this is essentially a tax on people who die unexpectedly. Anyone who knows they're going to die can simply give their money away. Sure, any money given away within 3 years of death is counted in the estate, but if you're around 65, you've probably got a few more years left in you, and you can count on your heirs to financially support you in the event that you accidentally gave away too much. I see no reason to punish those who die in tragic accidents while rewarding those who die old, generally living a long life is considered quite a reward in itself.
The problem with the income tax is that it's a tax on getting rich, not on being rich. Hence, property taxes and sales taxes make much more sense. Higher estate taxes might seem like a good idea, but with a bit of careful planning, you can minimize the amount of taxable money you actually have when you die, so really it's just a tax on people who die unexpectedly, and it seems kind of excessively cruel to punish the families of those who have a loved one die suddenly and unexpectedly, but leave alone those who die at a predictable time. One of the best solutions I've heard of is taxing the unimproved value of land: you figure out about what an empty lot where your property is would be worth, and tax a percentage of that. That way you avoid the disincentive that some property taxes have against improving buildings (in the case of those that tax the improved value) and the disincentive against buying new houses (as in the case of those that tax the original purchase price, making no adjustment for inflation).
And I quote: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and whithout regard to any census or enumeration." Ratified Feb. 3, 1913. Now who's the one who should do some reading?
My main theory is that more large corporations believe that they are much better off with government regulation than without.
Um, duh. Why do you think companies spend so much on lobbying? Because they get laws passed that help them at the expense of consumers. This is precisely why repealing regulations would distribute power more widely. Take the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission). The ICC was orginally created to control the railroad "monopolies" around the turn of the century. However, it quickly became a tool of those railroad companies, allowing them to charge higher rates than they could have under a competitive system, and allowed them to stifle competition from trucking and cargo planes when that developed. Had the ICC never existed, the railroads would not have been able to charge as much (because they were never really monopolies anyway, anymore than Microsoft is; people had choices, even if those choices were limited), and they would have lost what control of the market they did have the moment trucking became viable. The best protection against overly powerful corporations is the free market.
I agree that Harry Browne is not the greatest proponent of free market capitalism, for a truly brilliant explanation, read Milton Friedman's Free to Choose. Browne's a pretty good canidate and all, but he just isn't as good at explaining as at Nobel Prize winning economist...
...until their patents expire! Look out baby, I'm going to topple Nintendo with my own cheap knock off version of the NES!
Okay, I admit, I actually don't know if Nintendo patented anything on the NES, or if they did, whether it's covered by Japanese or American laws, but things like this are still useful in illustrating how long 17 years is in technological terms.
Then why was the Open Source Definition even created?
Mainly to deal with the problems other people keep pointing out: that the term "free" tends to make most people think of cost, not of freedom. Perhaps that's a sad commentary on society, but the point was to make a term that made most people immediately understand what the movement was about.
Vapor. As other people have remarked, the entire page talked about the marketing posibilities for sponsors. It's an effort to drum up some publicity and soak up a bit of cash, nothing more.
IBM claimed there was a need for about 10 computers in the world. I've come to realize that they were right... As long as there are stupid people, the peecee industry will continue to roll.
Wow, I'm so awed to be in the presence of one of the 10 people in the world who truly, honestly need a computer. What a wonderful, exciting, stimulating life you must have.
Or is this a case of "it takes one to know one?" You know that all but 10 buyers of computers are idiots because you yourself are an idiot? I dearly hope that this is an intentional troll posted by someone blessed with eternally high karma due to his sub-1000 slashdot ID, because this is definately one of the stupidest posts I've seen in quite some time, and I hope that someone knocks this post back down the moderation chain quick.
This is fairly simple. What makes it onto Slashdot is whatever [CmdrTaco/Hemos/Timothy/insert one of many slashdot posters here] finds interesting when reading through submissions. There is no pattern, beyond the random chaos in the posters' minds. Any attempt to predict articles may succeed over short periods, but will catastrophically fail when confronted with what is known as "the whiskey effect" (TWE), when CmdrTaco signs on drunk.
Ask Slashdot: I'm writing a report^H^H^H^H^H^H article about the most important inventions in history, and would like help from those who use technology everyday. So, in your opinion, what are the three greatest inventions in history, and why?
Please limit your answers to, at most, two double spaced pages.
Slashdot Mirror
If this gives the police the right to demand cryptographic keys, then encyption wouldn't help. You get a choice: give them the key and go to jail for warez distribution, or refuse and go to jail for obstruction of justice. Man, I can't wait for freenet to become usable (not that I'm a big fan of warez, but it would just be very satisfying for me to know that despite the laws passed, the FBI still can't control us).
How ironic, given that this is /. The reason the Star Wars bit looks like a link, but is unclickable is this: <a href="http://games.lasers.org/images/asteroids.jpg ">Asteroids<a> That's really very disappointing, I think Star Wars would be the primary game I'd want to play. Oh well, maybe they'll get it working soon. Finally, the science museum near my house will be able to turn a profit off of that Laserium equipment :)
Libertarian beliefs are very simple: you are free to do whatever you want so long as it does not infringe upon others' right to do the same. The Constitution, conveniently, works very well with that, but that's a lucky coincidence, not a justification for Libertarianism.
Railroads, however, most certainly are excludable. Some people economists claim that there would be a market for private highways if the government opened things up, since most highways are also excludable (see toll roads if you need proof of this). Many of these things are under control not because there's no market, but because the government believes they are natural monopolies (meaning that due to the way the market is set up, one company will invariably rise to prominence; the OS industry may be a natural monopoly, because the larger the market share, the more software runs on it, and the more software that runs on it, the more its market share will increase), and therefore things will be better if the monopoly is under government control than if it were a private monopoly. Of course, the reality is that government monopolies are no more consumer friendly than privete ones, just the money is going to a large number of wasteful bureacrats instead of a small number of efficient executives. Decide for yourself which is the lesser evil :)
No, money doesn't rot, but if you've got more than you're inclined to spend, and you can't pass it along to the next generation, then the result is the same. The only reason I used food as an example is to show why inheritance taxes lower incentive to work by using a one commodity system. My point though, is that a large inheritance tax is not the solution to unearned wealth. The solution is property tax. Sure, you could "avoid" the tax by living in a crappy house in a bad neighborhood, but what's the point in being rich then? An annual tax related to assets (a property tax being the easiest way to accomplish this), rather than an income tax or a one time tax (be it when you die, or on your 50th birthday) is the best way to prevent idle rich.
Now, make this a bit more general. Substitute "money" for food, and you've basically got modern society. If people can't pass it on to their kids, they've got no reason to try to make any more money than they plan to spend.
Another simpler argument is that this is essentially a tax on people who die unexpectedly. Anyone who knows they're going to die can simply give their money away. Sure, any money given away within 3 years of death is counted in the estate, but if you're around 65, you've probably got a few more years left in you, and you can count on your heirs to financially support you in the event that you accidentally gave away too much. I see no reason to punish those who die in tragic accidents while rewarding those who die old, generally living a long life is considered quite a reward in itself.
Um, duh. Why do you think companies spend so much on lobbying? Because they get laws passed that help them at the expense of consumers. This is precisely why repealing regulations would distribute power more widely. Take the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission). The ICC was orginally created to control the railroad "monopolies" around the turn of the century. However, it quickly became a tool of those railroad companies, allowing them to charge higher rates than they could have under a competitive system, and allowed them to stifle competition from trucking and cargo planes when that developed. Had the ICC never existed, the railroads would not have been able to charge as much (because they were never really monopolies anyway, anymore than Microsoft is; people had choices, even if those choices were limited), and they would have lost what control of the market they did have the moment trucking became viable. The best protection against overly powerful corporations is the free market.
I agree that Harry Browne is not the greatest proponent of free market capitalism, for a truly brilliant explanation, read Milton Friedman's Free to Choose. Browne's a pretty good canidate and all, but he just isn't as good at explaining as at Nobel Prize winning economist...
Okay, I admit, I actually don't know if Nintendo patented anything on the NES, or if they did, whether it's covered by Japanese or American laws, but things like this are still useful in illustrating how long 17 years is in technological terms.
Mainly to deal with the problems other people keep pointing out: that the term "free" tends to make most people think of cost, not of freedom. Perhaps that's a sad commentary on society, but the point was to make a term that made most people immediately understand what the movement was about.
Wow, I'm so awed to be in the presence of one of the 10 people in the world who truly, honestly need a computer. What a wonderful, exciting, stimulating life you must have.
Or is this a case of "it takes one to know one?" You know that all but 10 buyers of computers are idiots because you yourself are an idiot? I dearly hope that this is an intentional troll posted by someone blessed with eternally high karma due to his sub-1000 slashdot ID, because this is definately one of the stupidest posts I've seen in quite some time, and I hope that someone knocks this post back down the moderation chain quick.
I hope that this clears things up for you.
Please limit your answers to, at most, two double spaced pages.
Thank you.