Well, the excuse for state sponsored gambling (aka the lottery) is that a significant portion of the proceeds goes to education. It's "for our children," and so the nobility of the goal is supposed to be what makes it okay.
Of course, what they try to avoid telling you is that the lottery has the worst payoff ratio (usually less than one dollar in three paid into the system gets paid back in prizes) of any form of gambling, legal or illegal. I know someone's.sig around here says "the lottery is a tax on those who are bad at math," and truer words have never been spoken.
The Libertarian in me likes the fact that it's a volutary tax, however.:)
Wow. Okay, now as far as government programs go, I like the space program more than most, but that's an awful lot for a single space station that seems to have very little in the way of concrete goals, aside from "fostering the spirit of international cooperation." If this is just for the shuttle flights, then presumably it's being paid for solely by America, and with approximately 250 million Americans, that's $240-400 EACH! I'd be interested in paying maybe $100, I think, for a space station that I'll never be able to go to, but $400 is just crazy.
"I feel the Green party... is the best of many worlds, by mixing some good libertarian ideas, a passion for social justice, and a good helping of civic responsibility and 'daily democracy'."
Okay, wow, where in Nader's platform do you see ANY libertarian ideas? Libertarianism is about cutting down goverment, while Nader has, from time of birth, been responsible for the creation of more government agencies than most politicians. Any resemblance in policies whatsoever between Nader and Browne is pure coincidence, and the two support their policies for totally different reasons, Browne because it will help the cause of freedom, and Nader because it will help the cause of unions.
Sorry to dive into that off-topic correction, but as a Libertarian there is no way I could let that stand.
I hope everyone noticed that the article does NOT claim that Microsoft bought Corel. Microsoft bought preferred, non-voting stock. This means that Microsoft has no more or less legal authority over Corel than they did before. This is a symbolic move more than anything, to show that Microsoft now has an economic interest in seeing Corel do well.
If you have to hook a propane tank to a fuel cell, you're probably NOT going to get electricity cheaper than it's sold "on the grid." You'll be more independent, but you won't want to burn an extra tank to turn natural gas into cash.
You're also not going to get electricity cheaper if you use solar cells. Solar cells have an approximate lifespan of 25 years, and so if take the price of the setup, divided by the amount of electricity you expect to be able to produce (varies depending on location), the price for power will generally be around $.15 to $.20 per KwH, as opposed to the price of more like $.09 that most Americans pay. So, if you're into the environment, go for it, but don't expect to become fabulously wealthy by setting up a solar array and selling your power.
Five years is still too long. 5 years ago MS was just coming out with Win95, and Linux has gone from virtually unknown to semi-mainstream in that period. Two years is reasonable. It gives a company just enough head start to be established by the time anyone else is allowed to make a competing product, but it does not give the same sort of monopoly power that 5 years would.
That's right, now you too can run AOL from your Linux box! AOL 6.0, which current AOL users may beta test, will include both Windows NT (I'm sure after the millionth person called in and asked "why won't AOL work now that I've installed Windows 2000?" they decided they'd better add it) and Linux versions. I've installed the Win2k version on my little brother's windows partition, but haven't had a chance to try out the Linux version yet. The reasoning, of course, is that if AOL is going to release those Transmeta/Linux based web appliances, they'd better have a working Linux version of AOL to ship them with.
First off, as the other reply asks, what the hell is an OAP? If you're going to use an obscure acronym, explain it.
Second, do you have any links or data to support this 10,000 mpg statistic? Unless these cars are just going downhill with their motors idle, I find it rather difficult to believe that there are cars getting 300-fold better fuel efficiency.
*sigh* You're right, I misread your post, sorry. It was early in the morning, and I was tired. Please ignore my initial post. We ought to be able to put updates on out posts like the Slashdot authors can.
Come on, there's a Katz filter for a reason! Anything posted in another section by a Slashdot poster should be attributed to that poster, not to the head of the section.
In a word: free. With processors as cheap and widely available as they are, performance issues are not as serious as many people seem to think. Sure, coding an embedded OS from the ground up might be a little more efficient, the costs for licensing or developing your own is likely to be a lot more expensive than simply beefing up your processor a bit. As for the various customization work that they'd have to do, that's what the open source community is for, there are lots of us who think that trying to add thus-and-such functionality to their cellphone's OS a great way to spend a weekend. All this consortium has to do is pick up the slack.
(This is not so far-fetched. For much of the 1900's it was against the law for physicians to explain anything about birth control to their patients. Reflect on that for a bit...)
I hate it when people refuse to understand the pro-life movement. From the perspective of many people, abortion is murder. A doctor is not going to provide you with information on how to most effectively kill your next door neighbor, is he? It doesn't matter that, in not telling you how to commit murder, you might end up hurting yourself. The same argument is appropriate for abortion, if one is a pro-lifer. Now then, I personally do not believe that abortion is murder, but don't act like those who do are trying to restrict what you do with your body, they're simply trying to prevent what to them seems like murder.
I agree with the comment that this is a very interesting bit of sci-fi, if the idea of terraforming Mars appeals to you, but beware the plot and sociology. About 50 pages into Green Mars, I got so fed up with how just plain dumb the sociological theories were, I chucked the book and bought myself the current issue of Forbes. Definately one lf the smarter moves I've made. I guess this is sort of flamebait, but I just thought that with everyone extolling the virtues of the trilogy, a dissenting opinion should be heard.
Yes, I believe that this is a very important point. Regardless of your beliefs about the morality of gun control laws, they are obviously unconstitutional.
Until the second amendment is repealed, gun control laws should not continue to be passed. There is a reason that we have a constitution, and it is to protect those rights that America's founders believed to be important.
Perhaps the drafters of the Consitution were wrong, perhaps the right to keep and bear arms is a foolish, dangerous right; this is an issue we could argue about all day. Most people, however, would agree that overall, the Bill of Rights, and more generally the Constitution, is a very good thing. If we start ignoring those sections that become inconvenient to us, then we set a highly dangerous precedent. What if habeas corpus is the next to go? Or free speech/freedom of the press?
Many of the same arguments against the second amendment (that firearms technology was completely different in revolutionary times) could equally well apply to the first (technologies to convey "speech" have also grown by leaps and bounds).
The Constitution was written to be amended. Before any more of this unconstitutional silliness continues, we must acknowledge what we are doing.
This is a common misconception. Jules Verne actually didn't come up with any ideas that weren't already out there. At the time of the writing of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, for example, submarines had already been used in several military engagements. Admittedly, the submarines were very primitive, but they did exist. Indeed, Jules Verne wrote many intentional inaccuracies into his books, for example Earth to the Moon is mainly a jab at the ridiculous ideas Americans come up with. Of course he knew the force of being shot to the moon would kill a man, and that's precisely why he wrote it in. Jules Verne is a very entertainin writer, but certainly not a scientific innovator.
"One Child" policy and other population control
on
Thus Spake Stallman
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· Score: 1
First of all, China's one child policy is only enforced in the cities, as the peasants still need lots of kids to keep the farms running. Ergo, the success has been limited. Of course, this really is rather obvious. If it WERE strictly enforced, they should be losing over half their population every generation.
Now then, as for the other idea, the "give tax breaks to people who don't have kids" idea, that might work. Of course, there are probably much easier ways of doing it: simply cut out the existing tax breaks for people who DO have kids (only a couple hundred bucks, but still), or eliminate government schools. Nothing like forcing parents to pay for their kids' education to dissuade them, huh? Seriously, if you examine this policy you'll realize that the people it hurts the most are the kids, because any policy involving monetary compensation has the effect of transferring money out of the hands of parents.
Still, maybe it would be worthwhile to impose a little hardship on families now in order to prevent disaster 10, 50, 100, or 1000 years from now (whenever you think consumption will outstrip supply). The problem though is that the countries that are actually causing population growth are third world countries that consider other matters (like finding food) more pressing. Industrialized countries like America are almost stagnant, most growth comes from immigration (from the aforementioned third world countries). Indeed, the average number of babies a Japanese woman gives birth to is approximately 1.9, so their population would be declining. Industrialized countries practicing population control would be silly. So the population would double in 32 rather than 31 years... not very worthwhile.
Very true, very true, the logic is dangerous. I think anyone who really sits down and thinks about it will probably agree that this is a Good Thing. At the same time, it is also true that permission was NOT obtained, and that runs very contrary to how most people percieve the "comments are owned by the Poster" bit at the end of the page. So, I do approve this project, because I believe that it is worthy, but only so long as a system is instituted in Slashdot to let people specify whether they are willing to have their comments published.
Already happened. WotC got rights to the concept of CCGs that involve turning a card sideways to indicate use (tapping), and is getting royalties from all those companies which produce similar games. Plus the aforementioned thing with TSR claiming automatic ownership of all AD&D related fan material.
Basically, Square had been a miserable flop as far as game development went, and they were going to have to close their doors if something dramatic didn't happen. So, they took all their remaining money and poured it into one last big game, in the hope that maybe it would be able to at least allow them to pay off their debts before closing down. It was to be their last game, and hence, the "Final Fantasy." Instead, the game was made a tremendous amount of money, allowing Square not only to pay off their outstanding debts, but left them with plenty to continue developing games far into the future. And now you know.
I didn't go to the conference, so I'm sorry if I've missinterpreted what Mr. Merkele said, but it seems to me that he's mixing up defensive "weapons" and offensive weapons that can be easily defended against. When a doomesday-style weapon is invented (say, nukes), and there is no defense against it, then the weapon will not be used by rational people (ie, most heads of government) for fear of retaliation. On the other hand, if some nutcase does get ahold of it, then we're all gonna die. This, if I understand it correctly, is what Ralph Merkele is saying nanites are NOT. He believes that the threat is easy to defend against (the "advantage is given to defense"). This does not mean that nanites are a "defensive weapon" in the same way as castles, because castles don't kill people. Castles only make it harder for people armed with swords to kill those inside. Nanites, however, would kill people, just not very many because of defensive precautions. Therefore, it would be more accurate to compare nanites to poisonous gas, or conventional bombing, both of which would be very deadly were it not for gas masks and bomb shelters. All would kill people indiscriminately, but would be unlikely to end civilization as we know it.
The reason that you don't see the corruption as much in federal agencies is that they have more limited power. Corruption in the President could mean obtaining secret FBI files about his political opponents, whereas corruption in a NASA director might be spending a lot of money on a mission of dubious scientific value to study Europa because he thought the 2001 series was really cool. NASA is run by a special interest: the scientists and the aerospace industry. Their interests include more scientific research and more money spent on spacecraft. That's really the entire purpose of NASA, isn't it? So, corruption and special interests are equally present in all areas of government, it's just a matter of how much that corruption is felt by the general population.
The only reason that higher demand means higher prices is because there's a scarce supply of most goods. If you want to produce more Backstreet Boys albums, that means you need to divert more CD factory time away from the Spice Girls. To justify this switch, you'll want a larger profit, so you'll charge a higher price. As for bargain bin items, this is an example of people thinking at the margin: the costs for producing crappy, unwanted books has already been paid, but the income for selling those books has obviously not been recieved. Therefore, the bookstore would rather have a little money than none at all, to get back some of the price that they paid. In the case of digital music, however, neither of these considerations apply. There is effectively no scarcity and no per unit cost (sure, bandwidth costs, but on a per unit basis that can be safely ignored, or paid by advertisers, at any rate), so it would not be unreasonable to charge less for more popular songs. It would also not be unreasonable to charge more for more popular songs. Good ol' fashioned market research will have to determine what the best way to maximize profits is.
Yes, you are innocent until proven guilty under the law, that doesn't mean that the FBI can't be suspicous of you. They had a hell of a time finding any evidence against Al Capone, but they were still pretty sure that he was a gangster. So long as no legal action was taken on Ms. Baker, I see no constitutional issue.
Brown University had its first online election the same week. So we weren't any earlier, but we weren't later, either. It sounds like a lot of colleges had online elections for the first time this year.
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Of course, what they try to avoid telling you is that the lottery has the worst payoff ratio (usually less than one dollar in three paid into the system gets paid back in prizes) of any form of gambling, legal or illegal. I know someone's .sig around here says "the lottery is a tax on those who are bad at math," and truer words have never been spoken.
The Libertarian in me likes the fact that it's a volutary tax, however. :)
Okay, wow, where in Nader's platform do you see ANY libertarian ideas? Libertarianism is about cutting down goverment, while Nader has, from time of birth, been responsible for the creation of more government agencies than most politicians. Any resemblance in policies whatsoever between Nader and Browne is pure coincidence, and the two support their policies for totally different reasons, Browne because it will help the cause of freedom, and Nader because it will help the cause of unions.
Sorry to dive into that off-topic correction, but as a Libertarian there is no way I could let that stand.
You're also not going to get electricity cheaper if you use solar cells. Solar cells have an approximate lifespan of 25 years, and so if take the price of the setup, divided by the amount of electricity you expect to be able to produce (varies depending on location), the price for power will generally be around $.15 to $.20 per KwH, as opposed to the price of more like $.09 that most Americans pay. So, if you're into the environment, go for it, but don't expect to become fabulously wealthy by setting up a solar array and selling your power.
That's right, now you too can run AOL from your Linux box! AOL 6.0, which current AOL users may beta test, will include both Windows NT (I'm sure after the millionth person called in and asked "why won't AOL work now that I've installed Windows 2000?" they decided they'd better add it) and Linux versions. I've installed the Win2k version on my little brother's windows partition, but haven't had a chance to try out the Linux version yet. The reasoning, of course, is that if AOL is going to release those Transmeta/Linux based web appliances, they'd better have a working Linux version of AOL to ship them with.
Second, do you have any links or data to support this 10,000 mpg statistic? Unless these cars are just going downhill with their motors idle, I find it rather difficult to believe that there are cars getting 300-fold better fuel efficiency.
Come on, there's a Katz filter for a reason! Anything posted in another section by a Slashdot poster should be attributed to that poster, not to the head of the section.
In a word: free. With processors as cheap and widely available as they are, performance issues are not as serious as many people seem to think. Sure, coding an embedded OS from the ground up might be a little more efficient, the costs for licensing or developing your own is likely to be a lot more expensive than simply beefing up your processor a bit. As for the various customization work that they'd have to do, that's what the open source community is for, there are lots of us who think that trying to add thus-and-such functionality to their cellphone's OS a great way to spend a weekend. All this consortium has to do is pick up the slack.
I hate it when people refuse to understand the pro-life movement. From the perspective of many people, abortion is murder. A doctor is not going to provide you with information on how to most effectively kill your next door neighbor, is he? It doesn't matter that, in not telling you how to commit murder, you might end up hurting yourself. The same argument is appropriate for abortion, if one is a pro-lifer. Now then, I personally do not believe that abortion is murder, but don't act like those who do are trying to restrict what you do with your body, they're simply trying to prevent what to them seems like murder.
Obviously Katz identifies, on a very deep and fundamental level, with the movie
Until the second amendment is repealed, gun control laws should not continue to be passed. There is a reason that we have a constitution, and it is to protect those rights that America's founders believed to be important.
Perhaps the drafters of the Consitution were wrong, perhaps the right to keep and bear arms is a foolish, dangerous right; this is an issue we could argue about all day. Most people, however, would agree that overall, the Bill of Rights, and more generally the Constitution, is a very good thing. If we start ignoring those sections that become inconvenient to us, then we set a highly dangerous precedent. What if habeas corpus is the next to go? Or free speech/freedom of the press?
Many of the same arguments against the second amendment (that firearms technology was completely different in revolutionary times) could equally well apply to the first (technologies to convey "speech" have also grown by leaps and bounds).
The Constitution was written to be amended. Before any more of this unconstitutional silliness continues, we must acknowledge what we are doing.
Now then, as for the other idea, the "give tax breaks to people who don't have kids" idea, that might work. Of course, there are probably much easier ways of doing it: simply cut out the existing tax breaks for people who DO have kids (only a couple hundred bucks, but still), or eliminate government schools. Nothing like forcing parents to pay for their kids' education to dissuade them, huh? Seriously, if you examine this policy you'll realize that the people it hurts the most are the kids, because any policy involving monetary compensation has the effect of transferring money out of the hands of parents.
Still, maybe it would be worthwhile to impose a little hardship on families now in order to prevent disaster 10, 50, 100, or 1000 years from now (whenever you think consumption will outstrip supply). The problem though is that the countries that are actually causing population growth are third world countries that consider other matters (like finding food) more pressing. Industrialized countries like America are almost stagnant, most growth comes from immigration (from the aforementioned third world countries). Indeed, the average number of babies a Japanese woman gives birth to is approximately 1.9, so their population would be declining. Industrialized countries practicing population control would be silly. So the population would double in 32 rather than 31 years... not very worthwhile.
Very true, very true, the logic is dangerous. I think anyone who really sits down and thinks about it will probably agree that this is a Good Thing. At the same time, it is also true that permission was NOT obtained, and that runs very contrary to how most people percieve the "comments are owned by the Poster" bit at the end of the page. So, I do approve this project, because I believe that it is worthy, but only so long as a system is instituted in Slashdot to let people specify whether they are willing to have their comments published.
Cheers!
Basically, Square had been a miserable flop as far as game development went, and they were going to have to close their doors if something dramatic didn't happen. So, they took all their remaining money and poured it into one last big game, in the hope that maybe it would be able to at least allow them to pay off their debts before closing down. It was to be their last game, and hence, the "Final Fantasy." Instead, the game was made a tremendous amount of money, allowing Square not only to pay off their outstanding debts, but left them with plenty to continue developing games far into the future. And now you know.
I didn't go to the conference, so I'm sorry if I've missinterpreted what Mr. Merkele said, but it seems to me that he's mixing up defensive "weapons" and offensive weapons that can be easily defended against. When a doomesday-style weapon is invented (say, nukes), and there is no defense against it, then the weapon will not be used by rational people (ie, most heads of government) for fear of retaliation. On the other hand, if some nutcase does get ahold of it, then we're all gonna die. This, if I understand it correctly, is what Ralph Merkele is saying nanites are NOT. He believes that the threat is easy to defend against (the "advantage is given to defense"). This does not mean that nanites are a "defensive weapon" in the same way as castles, because castles don't kill people. Castles only make it harder for people armed with swords to kill those inside. Nanites, however, would kill people, just not very many because of defensive precautions. Therefore, it would be more accurate to compare nanites to poisonous gas, or conventional bombing, both of which would be very deadly were it not for gas masks and bomb shelters. All would kill people indiscriminately, but would be unlikely to end civilization as we know it.
The reason that you don't see the corruption as much in federal agencies is that they have more limited power. Corruption in the President could mean obtaining secret FBI files about his political opponents, whereas corruption in a NASA director might be spending a lot of money on a mission of dubious scientific value to study Europa because he thought the 2001 series was really cool. NASA is run by a special interest: the scientists and the aerospace industry. Their interests include more scientific research and more money spent on spacecraft. That's really the entire purpose of NASA, isn't it? So, corruption and special interests are equally present in all areas of government, it's just a matter of how much that corruption is felt by the general population.
The only reason that higher demand means higher prices is because there's a scarce supply of most goods. If you want to produce more Backstreet Boys albums, that means you need to divert more CD factory time away from the Spice Girls. To justify this switch, you'll want a larger profit, so you'll charge a higher price. As for bargain bin items, this is an example of people thinking at the margin: the costs for producing crappy, unwanted books has already been paid, but the income for selling those books has obviously not been recieved. Therefore, the bookstore would rather have a little money than none at all, to get back some of the price that they paid. In the case of digital music, however, neither of these considerations apply. There is effectively no scarcity and no per unit cost (sure, bandwidth costs, but on a per unit basis that can be safely ignored, or paid by advertisers, at any rate), so it would not be unreasonable to charge less for more popular songs. It would also not be unreasonable to charge more for more popular songs. Good ol' fashioned market research will have to determine what the best way to maximize profits is.
Yes, you are innocent until proven guilty under the law, that doesn't mean that the FBI can't be suspicous of you. They had a hell of a time finding any evidence against Al Capone, but they were still pretty sure that he was a gangster. So long as no legal action was taken on Ms. Baker, I see no constitutional issue.
Brown University had its first online election the same week. So we weren't any earlier, but we weren't later, either. It sounds like a lot of colleges had online elections for the first time this year.