Just because there are faults or even abuses within a particular agency, does not mean they don't help us at all, or don't have a net positive effect.
The fact that the USDA has laws requiring certain conditions for meat safety (such as, storage conditions, animal health, etc.) means that we can eat a hamburger without worrying about getting sick the way it is in some other countries.
The FDA allows some very nasty stuff into our food supply (aspartame, for example), and blocks some very safe things (stevia, on the same topic), but even so, the fact that they require certain amounts of testing, and have control over labeling and claims made for medicines, means much less snake oil than would otherwise exist.
Without the USDA, many, most, some, who knows how many, American beef suppliers would be just as safe as they are now, but it's 100% certain that there would be many that are much less safe. So-called "economic realities" would ensure that some people would cut corners, just as they do now. The difference is that with the USDA, those corners are much further out, so cutting a corner now is still superior to cutting corners in a truly laissez-faire system.
Same with the FDA. You think new age bullshit medicine is bad now? You think corporate drug dealers that have a financial incentive to get everyone hooked on their drugs regardless of need or efficacy are bad now, just imagine how bad it would be after removing the barrier that is the FDA!
I'd much rather have a cattle rancher go out of business than have his financial troubles mean people needlessly dying. I'd much rather have some people die because a drug isn't yet approved (although this is a different topic, in that if you are terminal, you should be able to choose an unapproved medicine), than to have many more die because a medicine is brought to market without sufficient testing.
Instead of trying to fight the technology, why not fight its abuse? After all, we don't ban debuggers because you can use them to crack programs! We don't ban knives because you can stick them in people!
Because banning GMOs is much easier than fighting abuse.
In other words, of the two, attempting to ban GMOs is going to keep me safer than attempting to curb Monsanto et al's abusive practices, even if supporting GMOs and curbing corporate malfeasance would be the superior outcome.
About 35 million cows are slaughtered in the U.S. If you test 1% of them, you get a maximum margin of error of about 0.17%. Testing 10% would only reduce that error margin to 0.05% while increasing the cost 10x. Testing 50% would reduce the error margin to 0.02% while increasing cost by 50x.
In other words, at 1% testing (which isn't actually enforced, but that's a different matter), there's a 1.7-in-1,000 chance of tainted beef slipping through? How many millions, or billions, of cows are eaten every year in the US? What percentage of cows have mad cow?
Say what you like but I'm sure that the Apple company wallet lost more than a little weight to get that holiday screen time for their products.
Apple is notorious for declining requests for for-pay product placement. In fact, Apple won't even loan you props for a film.
Why? Because Apple doesn't need to. Filmmakers seem willing enough as it is to use Macs without compensation.
Buy some stock, and ask them, during their next shareholder meeting, if they engage in product placement, and if not, why not. It's a valid question, and they are legally required to be truthful (although not legally required to be forthcoming). You can also track their expenses, which are public, and look for promotional expenses which do not match reasonable estimates for their ad and promotional campaigns.
Or, you could just assume that because House (sheesh, how much do you think Freddie Mac (wait, Freddie Mac!!! How much did Apple pay them!) paid for that placement!) got one of the hottest, most talked about tech gadgets of 2007 and 2008 for Christmas and because the computers on a show are all from one company (which happens to have the most award-winning designs) it could only mean one thing: for-pay product placement.
If Apple didnt pay for their product placement, they would be sueing large corporations that are using their brands image, products and so forth... for financial gain.
That's absurd. Do you think that every visible logo on fim, TV and video game requires permission? Even more absurd, that is has to be the case that the trademark holder always either pays for the placement, or sues and receives payment?
There are a lot of TV shows that do this. Numb3rs, for example, always seems to tape over the Apple logos. This isn't a sign of "haha, how's that for product placement!", it's a sign of a shot that included a Mac (because they look nice, or because it's what was on set), but when approached for payment, Apple declined, so the someone involved covered the logo.
Just FWIW, the last time I checked Apple had the largest product placement budget of any computer maker I could find.
Actually, Apple doesn't pay for product placement. There are a few notable exceptions, like ID4 and MI which were more involved than mere product placement and were really cross-marketing.
The reason you see so many Macs on TV and in films is because they tend to look good. iPods get shown because that's what people have (do you really think a show wants to alienate/confuse its viewers by talking about an iRiver?).
No, the parent should be moderated as incorrect. Jerry Seinfeld was offered $5 million per episode to do another season of Seinfeld and turned it down. So no, he won't just go wherever the money is.
Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the consumer. We can blame the government all we want, but where the market is concerned, the buck does stop here. Literally. The real problem is that consumers have become lazy.
That's utter nonsense. No single person is "the consumers". Which particular consumer are you blaming? Is it my fault if I do everything right, but the majority of society does not? Is it your fault if you do everything right, but I and everyone else does not?
The problem is that the exploiters are blaming the victims. They are the ones shoveling shit down our airwaves, not us. Those to blame are the ones doing the actual crime. To assign the blame elsewhere is to promote a society where the lowest common denominator is deemed the highest ideal. You're actually promoting the very thing you are upset about. Does that seem sane to you? I can not understand how people can be so abysmally stupid as to willingly and knowingly promote their own downfall.
Your sig states you boycotted the Lost season premier, because ABC was too annoying. Do you think they care? Do you think the next season premier is going to be less annoying because of your boycott? Boycotts don't work unless they have a significant level of participation. A few people here and there? No impact. Well, not no impact. You impacted yourself by being subjected to all the annoyances promulgated by ABC, without even the upside of actually viewing a television episode which, I assume, you really did want to see.
Self-flagellation is one of the most foolish things a person can engage in. When you preach that society's woes are due to not enough people engaging in self-flagellation, you're giving the guilty a pass, and damning the victims. Great job!
the MAFIAA would have long been driven out of business
Only in the above thing, which does not exist.
But they are doing something they should not be allowed to do: interfering in the government, buying laws for themselves.
The laws are immoral, but the process which generates laws, both moral and immoral, is the best we've got. There's nothing wrong with the government passing laws which affect commerce, but there's definitely something wrong with the government passing laws, generally, which promote an industry (or worse, a small number of players in an industry) to the detriment of society as a whole.
Mildly humorous, but not helpful. Editorial bias doesn't simply mean infusion of the subjective experiences of the creator of a work, it means something more significant. It's more about whether the facts or views are notably altered in a way counter to what is a reasonable of factually consistent conclusion.
Otherwise, nothing ever written by anyone, not even a pure math equation or a technical diagram, is void of editorial bias, rendering such a term useless.
When someone uses a phone and calls it awkward and clunky, and they are able to demonstrate what they are talking about, it's not editorial bias. It's subjective, certainly, but not sufficiently tainted as to trigger cries of editorial bias. What would be editorial bias for such a thing is for someone to latch onto any little thing they can do reach their pre-chosen conclusion. I.e., if they want to the phone to be clunky, but it's really not, then talk about how the box it comes in is plain, or how the power brick is nothing special. On the other hand, if they want to make a plain or clunky phone elegant, they might mention how it comes with a cleaning cloth, or has a utilitarianism design or something. Both cases make, in and of themselves, for very weak arguments.
Just because I know the squirrel is going to eat an acorn does not mean that I somehow control the squirrel.
I never, ever, said anything about the knower controlling the subject.
Determinism isn't about being able to reasonably predict whether a squirrel is going to eat an acorn, or a person is going to cross a street. There are plenty of things which you can predict with a high degree of confidence. Determinism is about being able to calculate from any specific initial conditions, precisely, each and every action, choice, feeling, thought, etc., that a person will have throughout their entire lifetime.
It's like a pachinko ball. The precise initial conditions will determine the exact route the ball will take. The ball's path is pre-determined, and it has no choice. The question of free will of humans is whether we are in control of our actions, or whether they are merely the playing out of deterministic physics.
It would be helpful were you to actually state what you seem to think is wrong.
The best I can tell is you seem to believe quantum physics is actually deterministic. Could you kindly point me towards your Nobel prize? Because that's exactly what a person would win were they to demonstrate such a thing.
Come ON, "photons are the smallest quantities (quantum, pl. quanta) of light we can measure, and such a quantity can be thought of as a particle that has properties completely opposed to those of matter particles"? Now go read up on bounded waves.
Where did that come from? Did you click on the wrong reply button or something?
Just because we have a seemingly deterministic view of the world naturally (our range of senses pretty much avoid relativistic effects and quantum effects, landing smack-dab in the Newtonian clockwork realm), and have discovered an underlying, apparently statistical framework, doesn't mean it's alternating layers all the way down.
Before one can confidently say that it appears like things are just a series of alternations between determinism and non-determinism, you'd need more than just one or two flips, unless you can come up with a sufficiently useful model for why it's so (and turtles all the way down is no such model).
Slashdot Mirror
Just because there are faults or even abuses within a particular agency, does not mean they don't help us at all, or don't have a net positive effect.
The fact that the USDA has laws requiring certain conditions for meat safety (such as, storage conditions, animal health, etc.) means that we can eat a hamburger without worrying about getting sick the way it is in some other countries.
The FDA allows some very nasty stuff into our food supply (aspartame, for example), and blocks some very safe things (stevia, on the same topic), but even so, the fact that they require certain amounts of testing, and have control over labeling and claims made for medicines, means much less snake oil than would otherwise exist.
Without the USDA, many, most, some, who knows how many, American beef suppliers would be just as safe as they are now, but it's 100% certain that there would be many that are much less safe. So-called "economic realities" would ensure that some people would cut corners, just as they do now. The difference is that with the USDA, those corners are much further out, so cutting a corner now is still superior to cutting corners in a truly laissez-faire system.
Same with the FDA. You think new age bullshit medicine is bad now? You think corporate drug dealers that have a financial incentive to get everyone hooked on their drugs regardless of need or efficacy are bad now, just imagine how bad it would be after removing the barrier that is the FDA!
I'd much rather have a cattle rancher go out of business than have his financial troubles mean people needlessly dying. I'd much rather have some people die because a drug isn't yet approved (although this is a different topic, in that if you are terminal, you should be able to choose an unapproved medicine), than to have many more die because a medicine is brought to market without sufficient testing.
Pork won't, but it occasionally contains other nastiness, presumably the reasoning why pork isn't kosher.
The reason pork isn't kosher is that pigs resemble humans too much (seriously. this isn't about the obvious "people are fat and dirty, haha!" sense).
Remember, kosher was defined long before the firm establishment of modern science.
Instead of trying to fight the technology, why not fight its abuse? After all, we don't ban debuggers because you can use them to crack programs! We don't ban knives because you can stick them in people!
Because banning GMOs is much easier than fighting abuse.
In other words, of the two, attempting to ban GMOs is going to keep me safer than attempting to curb Monsanto et al's abusive practices, even if supporting GMOs and curbing corporate malfeasance would be the superior outcome.
About 35 million cows are slaughtered in the U.S. If you test 1% of them, you get a maximum margin of error of about 0.17%. Testing 10% would only reduce that error margin to 0.05% while increasing the cost 10x. Testing 50% would reduce the error margin to 0.02% while increasing cost by 50x.
In other words, at 1% testing (which isn't actually enforced, but that's a different matter), there's a 1.7-in-1,000 chance of tainted beef slipping through? How many millions, or billions, of cows are eaten every year in the US? What percentage of cows have mad cow?
1.7-in-1,000 happens to everyone everyday.
I bet Biden talked them into blocking Linux since it is the Open Source people who stand up to the RIAA.
Really?
I bet not a single politician was directly involved in the setting up of the live stream.
Close one eye.
Say what you like but I'm sure that the Apple company wallet lost more than a little weight to get that holiday screen time for their products.
Apple is notorious for declining requests for for-pay product placement. In fact, Apple won't even loan you props for a film.
Why? Because Apple doesn't need to. Filmmakers seem willing enough as it is to use Macs without compensation.
Buy some stock, and ask them, during their next shareholder meeting, if they engage in product placement, and if not, why not. It's a valid question, and they are legally required to be truthful (although not legally required to be forthcoming). You can also track their expenses, which are public, and look for promotional expenses which do not match reasonable estimates for their ad and promotional campaigns.
Or, you could just assume that because House (sheesh, how much do you think Freddie Mac (wait, Freddie Mac!!! How much did Apple pay them!) paid for that placement!) got one of the hottest, most talked about tech gadgets of 2007 and 2008 for Christmas and because the computers on a show are all from one company (which happens to have the most award-winning designs) it could only mean one thing: for-pay product placement.
If Apple didnt pay for their product placement, they would be sueing large corporations that are using their brands image, products and so forth... for financial gain.
That's absurd. Do you think that every visible logo on fim, TV and video game requires permission? Even more absurd, that is has to be the case that the trademark holder always either pays for the placement, or sues and receives payment?
There are a lot of TV shows that do this. Numb3rs, for example, always seems to tape over the Apple logos. This isn't a sign of "haha, how's that for product placement!", it's a sign of a shot that included a Mac (because they look nice, or because it's what was on set), but when approached for payment, Apple declined, so the someone involved covered the logo.
Your being deliberately obtuse doesn't make his premise correct.
Ah, I see. You've got Vista set to boot into Safe Move with Command Prompt. Press F8 during startup and you can change that.
Clearly this is simply meaning that Vista has stolen enough ideas from OS X to make even a make user endorse it.
Actually, he doesn't know he's pushing Vista. He thinks it's the upcoming Windows Mojave, which totally rocks.
Just FWIW, the last time I checked Apple had the largest product placement budget of any computer maker I could find.
Actually, Apple doesn't pay for product placement. There are a few notable exceptions, like ID4 and MI which were more involved than mere product placement and were really cross-marketing.
The reason you see so many Macs on TV and in films is because they tend to look good. iPods get shown because that's what people have (do you really think a show wants to alienate/confuse its viewers by talking about an iRiver?).
The biggest problem is that they don't have the equivalent of a command line "sudo"
Seriously? That's the biggest problem with Vista?
No, the parent should be moderated as incorrect. Jerry Seinfeld was offered $5 million per episode to do another season of Seinfeld and turned it down. So no, he won't just go wherever the money is.
Your tense is confused.
How exactly do I avoid it when every laptop in town has it preinstalled?
Not every laptop comes with Vista pre-installed.
Slashdot is ridiculous. Everyone here is complaining about a system they don't use and haven't seen.
With an intro statement like that, it's not Slashdot that's being ridiculous.
I know this is not illegal.
This is the exact type of behavior MS was convicted of a decade ago.
we can wake Windows remotely. This seems like a major security issue if not implemented correctly.
No kidding. Waking Windows locally is already a big enough security issue as it is!
Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the consumer. We can blame the government all we want, but where the market is concerned, the buck does stop here. Literally. The real problem is that consumers have become lazy.
That's utter nonsense. No single person is "the consumers". Which particular consumer are you blaming? Is it my fault if I do everything right, but the majority of society does not? Is it your fault if you do everything right, but I and everyone else does not?
The problem is that the exploiters are blaming the victims. They are the ones shoveling shit down our airwaves, not us. Those to blame are the ones doing the actual crime. To assign the blame elsewhere is to promote a society where the lowest common denominator is deemed the highest ideal. You're actually promoting the very thing you are upset about. Does that seem sane to you? I can not understand how people can be so abysmally stupid as to willingly and knowingly promote their own downfall.
Your sig states you boycotted the Lost season premier, because ABC was too annoying. Do you think they care? Do you think the next season premier is going to be less annoying because of your boycott? Boycotts don't work unless they have a significant level of participation. A few people here and there? No impact. Well, not no impact. You impacted yourself by being subjected to all the annoyances promulgated by ABC, without even the upside of actually viewing a television episode which, I assume, you really did want to see.
Self-flagellation is one of the most foolish things a person can engage in. When you preach that society's woes are due to not enough people engaging in self-flagellation, you're giving the guilty a pass, and damning the victims. Great job!
In pure capitalism
There's no such thing.
the MAFIAA would have long been driven out of business
Only in the above thing, which does not exist.
But they are doing something they should not be allowed to do: interfering in the government, buying laws for themselves.
The laws are immoral, but the process which generates laws, both moral and immoral, is the best we've got. There's nothing wrong with the government passing laws which affect commerce, but there's definitely something wrong with the government passing laws, generally, which promote an industry (or worse, a small number of players in an industry) to the detriment of society as a whole.
Mildly humorous, but not helpful. Editorial bias doesn't simply mean infusion of the subjective experiences of the creator of a work, it means something more significant. It's more about whether the facts or views are notably altered in a way counter to what is a reasonable of factually consistent conclusion.
Otherwise, nothing ever written by anyone, not even a pure math equation or a technical diagram, is void of editorial bias, rendering such a term useless.
When someone uses a phone and calls it awkward and clunky, and they are able to demonstrate what they are talking about, it's not editorial bias. It's subjective, certainly, but not sufficiently tainted as to trigger cries of editorial bias. What would be editorial bias for such a thing is for someone to latch onto any little thing they can do reach their pre-chosen conclusion. I.e., if they want to the phone to be clunky, but it's really not, then talk about how the box it comes in is plain, or how the power brick is nothing special. On the other hand, if they want to make a plain or clunky phone elegant, they might mention how it comes with a cleaning cloth, or has a utilitarianism design or something. Both cases make, in and of themselves, for very weak arguments.
*That's* editorial bias.
Just because I know the squirrel is going to eat an acorn does not mean that I somehow control the squirrel.
I never, ever, said anything about the knower controlling the subject.
Determinism isn't about being able to reasonably predict whether a squirrel is going to eat an acorn, or a person is going to cross a street. There are plenty of things which you can predict with a high degree of confidence. Determinism is about being able to calculate from any specific initial conditions, precisely, each and every action, choice, feeling, thought, etc., that a person will have throughout their entire lifetime.
It's like a pachinko ball. The precise initial conditions will determine the exact route the ball will take. The ball's path is pre-determined, and it has no choice. The question of free will of humans is whether we are in control of our actions, or whether they are merely the playing out of deterministic physics.
BZZT! Wrong!
It would be helpful were you to actually state what you seem to think is wrong.
The best I can tell is you seem to believe quantum physics is actually deterministic. Could you kindly point me towards your Nobel prize? Because that's exactly what a person would win were they to demonstrate such a thing.
Come ON, "photons are the smallest quantities (quantum, pl. quanta) of light we can measure, and such a quantity can be thought of as a particle that has properties completely opposed to those of matter particles"?
Now go read up on bounded waves.
Where did that come from? Did you click on the wrong reply button or something?
Just because we have a seemingly deterministic view of the world naturally (our range of senses pretty much avoid relativistic effects and quantum effects, landing smack-dab in the Newtonian clockwork realm), and have discovered an underlying, apparently statistical framework, doesn't mean it's alternating layers all the way down.
Before one can confidently say that it appears like things are just a series of alternations between determinism and non-determinism, you'd need more than just one or two flips, unless you can come up with a sufficiently useful model for why it's so (and turtles all the way down is no such model).