Hmm... how many "scientists" did state that the sun revolves around the earth?
To be fair, at the time, using the scientific method, all evidence pointed to such a conclusion. Then, as new evidence was discovered, the idea that the earth revolves around the sun took hold. I am of course simplifying here, but this is what occurred, and this process is how we know that science works. You see, if we removed all religion and all science from humanity, and allowed them to come back, science would eventually reach the same conclusions that we have historically (ie we would eventually come up with evolution once again), but religion is a crapshoot.
The important part of your post has been left out - why one who accepts creationism is not a scientist. Of course, it is because that person's findings are not supported by evidence, are not repeatable, and thus, those findings would not be accepted by the scientific community and that scientist would not be respected by his peers.
If anything in the study should bother you, its that 84% of "scientists" believe that the earth is warming because of human activity. The scientific community believes that the earth is warming, as it has over the past century (1 degree C), it is seen as likely that over the next century the earth could warm as much as 2 or 3 degrees C. This is not, however, attributed to human activity, but rather to the natural fluctuations of the earths temperature. Otherwise, we would have to conclude that the last ice age was caused by dinosaurs not burning enough fossil fuels.
I, for one, am against government interference in the free market. On the not bat shit crazy side of economics, if one could purchase a song for 81k, and obtain distribution rights for any and all purposes perpetually, that would be a fantastic price, even for shitty top 40 songs. In fact, I'm quite certain that there are music services who pay far more for timed licenses.
The reason that people download songs without paying for them currently is because the alternative is to pay for music that is lower in quality and has no added value than free releases and torrent sites. Furthermore, the risk of penalty is akin to a speeding ticket; if one is careful, one can speed as fast as they want and watch as the guy ahead of them gets pulled over.
The RIAA and music companies are aware if the amount of downloading that exists, and furthermore, they are ok with it. If they could sell at a higher price, have more copyright infringement occur, and make more money, that is what they would do. It would be the correct business decision as well.
If they could charge less for music, increase the amount of copyright infringment, and make more money, that is what they should do.
If music companies have not done the proper research to determine what the best price for music is, at which regardless of the amount of copyright infringement that will occur, to produce the highest amount of profit, then shareholders should file a massive lawsuit for gross incompetence, remove the current leadership, and replace with people who understand their market.
Anyone care to speculate as to why this hasnt occurred?
For one thing, they could sell PDF versions for 120% of retail price, so why would they discount?
With a PDF version, you dont even have to go to the bookstore or wait on shipping, so the consumer should pay more for the convenience.
If publishers want to save on overhead, they should create a publisher website with schools, sell access during a semester to online interactive PDF versions of texts. They could easily update for new editions, change questions, allow students to highlight and make notes, and once the semester is over, no need to sellback either. Students would like it because they really could go to class with just a netbook and wireless internet access. Professors would like it because they wouldnt have to keep up with correlations to old editions. If there was enough interest in permanently owning the text, some sort of printed version could be arranged for purchase (cough). Primary school (thats stuff below college level) could be the test site for this kind of program, and publishers should give massive discounts and free trials to lock students into the concept at a young age; its just good marketing sense.
To be fair, this concept already works in practice, for example the Becker Keller CPA review course works in this manner. Many lab courses when I was an undergrad worked this way too. There is absolutely no reason that all classes shouldn't do this; they generally are online anyway.
The only people getting screwed would be those with current editions that arent updating, and those courses could simply join the online program when they do update.
Where is it legal in the U.S. to feed animal products to herbivores (that are intended for human consumption...)?
By the definition of legal.
Its certainly not illegal, and there is no reason to make it so.
There, this is legal.
The same level of logic might lead you to ask questions like "Where is it legal in the US to allow mothers to not breast feed their children?," to which I would give the same answer.
Remember, there are such things as stupid questions, and you should not ask them.
In all fairness, harnessing sea power normally requires the use of jettys, which is a major cause of red tide. In practice, a farm of sea snakes will have the same effect.While you might not personally care if a bunch of fish die, but I'm guessing environmentalists might.
In order to get the sea snakes into the ocean in the first place, portugal also needs a multiday window where the ocean is calm. Good luck with that.
I don't know why I bother to respond to this ignorance, but fine, here goes:
The norman conquest, lead by William the Bastard, began with the Battle of Hastings. The victory replaced the ruling class and thus changed the nationalism of England for the next 8 centuries. This change was somewhere between 5k-8k of the population in number, so the Anglo-Normans most certainly did not speak french as the language of england. The germanic language spoken prior and by the masses continuing was of course english.
The norman conquest didn't kill everyone, they just took over as a ruling class. Then again, my original point was that anglo-saxon was a nation, not a race. Thanks for heavily drawing us off topic and still being wrong.
Well, retard, following the norman conquest of 1066, we had the period of Anglo-Normand England, as opposed to Anglo-Saxon. I'm guessing here, but they probably didnt need to speak French in England, since Anglo-Saxon refers to germanic tribes of Britain.
Silly me on that one. I forgot that French was spoken in England in the 6th and 7th centuries as the national language.
It would be pretty easy; all they would have to do is make it so that in the event that I can afford to pay for hospital care out of pocket, that I'm stuck in line behind those who can't.
When a free market says I can't buy health care, which is what occurs in countries that have national health care, I'm fucked.
Steve Jobs recently had a kidney transplant, but if he had to wait in line, millions of Mac fanbois may have lost the face that keeps their stock price absurdly high. Won't someone please think of the fanbois?
In all seriousness, if I have to accept a doctor's opinion because he/she/it accepts nationally mandated payments, and can't recognize that my doctor doesn't barely made it through medical school and I deserve better, I promise you I would move to South Africa and buy my doctor because he/she/it is competent before I take nationalized health care.
Ask any pregnant women, and I promise she would even if her extended family can't afford it.
This is the reality we live in, private health care isn't good enough in the US.
Canada's health care system is such that if you need immediate care, you can be put on a waiting list. If you are over a certain age, you can be put on a waiting list. I don't want that, you don't want that, no one wants that. If you lose the health lottery, everyone wants to be able to buy their way out of it. Even if it means declaring bankruptcy to do it.
In England, you don't have that option,your children are liable and there isnt a person alive in England who can reasonably afford lunch, much less health care. I met a truck driver who made 80k pounds a year in 2006 who skipped out on a 30 pound tab because he couldn't afford it.
If you live in the US, I implore you, do everything you can to find national health care, even if you can afford hospital care out of pocket. It isnt worth it for the 60% of the country that pays taxes, even as that number goes down every day.
The concept of a Jewish race is absurd, as Judaism is a religion, not a hereditary function. You can be Israeli but not Jewish and vice-versa.
The anglo-saxons refer to people in germanic tribes in part of Britain in the middle ages. The anglo-saxon period is dead, and no one alive can reasonably claim to decend from the anglo-saxons, thanks to the norman conquest of 1066.
I'll let you do your own research on celtics and slavs, which are also nations (even if they no longer exist), not races. Geographic location is not race, even if you name every location on earth.
Up to less than a century ago, we didnt have computers, the hair dryer, the horseless carriage, or q-tips. We live in the present, where race has a different meaning than nation.
Your definition of serfdom misses part of the definition. While indentured servitude was a specified time period contract with a specific owner and a serf was a form of indentured servitude with ties to the land, neither was by default a lifelong condition. Only slavery has that distinction. A land-based serf worked in exchange for specific rights and could earn their freedom by paying off their debts. Some did it by fighting in wars where they would be expected to die. Others did it by saving their land owner's life. Still others worked long enough to pay off their debt. The russian boyar, by the way, was a class of the aristocracy, and did not own his serfs or his land, as it was given to him as a matter of title, and could be taken away by the czar at any time for any reason.
In sweden's defense, they outlawed slavery and slave trade as a matter of nationalism, not racism. England was outlawing slave trade and sweden worried that other countries would expand into their territories, so they outlawed it altogether in 1813 (even though they allowed slavery until 1847). Race, however, was not a factor.
The civil war was fought not over the right to own slaves, but rather for the right for states to make laws that were not explicitly federal laws. You may note that powers not explicitly reserved by the federal government are reserved by the states in the US constitution. The issue of slavery was simply the biggest issue that many states wanted to fight over.
On the concept, anytime there is a large scale slave revolt in history, and the slaves lost, then a country fought a war to protect slavery.
Hatred/stereotyping of Americans cannot be construed as racism, because Americans are not a race. This is nationalism, which the vast majority of Americans engage in by actively choosing to live in the US. The majority of Americans have no education or respect for human life; most europeans destroy us on all metrics of education, and believe it or not, there are atheists in the US who believe that abortion in the case where the mother would otherwise certainly die is wrong.
America is a racist country. We have a melting pot of races here, and we have affirmative action, so every race begrudges every other race, gender, religion, etc for getting advantages based on these things despite laws that prohibit it. If you don't believe this occurs you are sitting with a blindfold on and fingers in your ears. Granted, this is true in european countries, they just dont lie about it.
Its futbol, not football. At football games, we dont have teams based on states. Our university teams dont have players based on states. If we did, people would would make fun of floridians and north carolinians and new yorkers (oh wait, they do) and arizonians with regional slurs. Making fun of the french is not racism, its nationalism.
I am quite certain you were no refused service for being an american. I am quite certain that it was because you were being a pompous jackass or because you didnt speak the language or because you demanded service when they werent actually open. Having been all over europe, I can assure you that restaurants welcome americans, as we tip in countries where it isnt customary, we eat a lot, and we genuinely enjoy the process of getting to enjoy another country's culture.
Judgement and stereotyping are a defense mechanism, and in most cases protect the individual more than they harm the innocent. As long as stereotypes continue to be true, I see no problem with it. As long as I avoid certain areas because people continue to be beaten, robbed, raped, and murdered in those areas, and specific kinds of people live in those areas, and I don't get beaten, robbed, raped and murdered, I feel like that's a win for me. If it takes conscious effort to combat racism, cast aside racist judgements, and put myself in a dangerous situation despite prior knowledge to avoid that situation, then I'm glad that judgement and stereotyping are human condition. Let's face it, so are you.
In all fairness, racism is a human condition prevalent in many cultures. I remember a Swedish gentleman suggesting that Swedes have never been racist. So I pointed him to a history book, and the term serf from the fact that they took slaves from other lands they conquered.
...How exactly is or was that racism? They took slaves from other lands they conquered, but not based on race. Serf, by the way, means indentured servant, which is distinguishable from slave in that indenture servents could earn their freedom in return for working off a debt.
Thats like calling someone an anti-semite because they buy a loaf of white bread at the grocery store.
And in a few months, Outliers will go to paperback, where it will be cheaper than $9.99, and the used copies of the paperback will be around $4. Kindle prices are only good on books currently still in hardcover only. For anything else, a used paperback is almost always cheaper.
I buy books frequently (several per month), and generally stick to used paperbacks. I tend to sell the books I don't care for, and keep the ones that I will refer back to (I don't read fiction, so books have repeat value for me). I would argue that the "subsidy" you point to is no subsidy at all. I'm still significantly better off buying dead tree books rather than a Kindle version.
I do have a Sony Reader that I use to read out of copyright books and chose it because Kindle can't handle PDF well. I'm not averse to eBooks as some are. Just waiting for it to actually make financial sense.
You will still have to go to a bookstore that has outliers in stock to get it. If you happen to be at the airport, or a hotel, or the DMV, you can't get it without a Kindle. The Kindle is also useful for more than just books. If I buy a newspaper on Kindle, I can store it on Amazon's server (if you think Amazon is going out of business anytime in the relevant future I advise you to take off the tinfoil hat) and get to it in under a minute when turn my wireless back on, rather than filling my apartment with boxes or hiring a storage space just for news (yes, some of us have a very real need to reference historical financial data).
I have personal property insurance, so if my house burns down, I don't have to have a list of every book I've ever bought because when I get my replacement Kindle, all of my purchased books will still be available.
If I want a friend to borrow a book that I've purchased, I log out of my kindle, log in to his Kindle, and he can view my entire library. If I don't trust him to log out when I next need to use my Kindle, he isn't a friend. If I lend him a dead tree book, I also don't have access to it, so its a wash on availability.
Yes, you can't sell ebooks. Due to the format, this actually makes sense, because you paying for the service, not the product. You can't change the size of the text in your dead tree book. You can't erase notes and write new ones in your dead tree book. You can't get free wireless text internet in your dead tree book. You can't read samples of books that a bookstore doesn't carry or have in stock.
My Kindle 2 has no problem with PDFs, because I use my laptop for them. I'm guessing if you didnt have a Sony reader you probably would too.
That would be your strawman...I didn't say anything regarding the merits of going out of the way for Office 2007; parent and I clearly already claim to have Office 2007.
I'm not throwing out the option of retarded though.
You didnt see the disk at the top of the screen or realize that that the button next to it is a drop menu, one item in which is an labeled print preview, followed immediately by quick print?
Are you retarded or have you never actually used Office 2007?
Thats odd, I just install adblock for firefox and whenever I need drivers for anything, I just do a google search, go to the website, click the download button without having to register any personal information, and in 30 seconds to 3 minutes I'm installed, depending on the size of the download. I dont have to reboot, click on ads, go to babelfish, run winrar, change my webbrowser, or really do anything inconvenient. Then again, I run vista 64 bit, which despite the comments of numerous people who haven't used a windows OS in 10 years, is so simple to use my mother has figured it out yet has enough flexibility that I can do anything I want with it that you could do with linux.
From my perspective, broken sound would be much more difficult to troubleshoot than installing drivers. After all, if your sound doesn't work, it could be a hardware issue (your speakers are broken, your connection is broken, you plugged something incorrectly, your mute button is on, etc) or a driver issue, whereas if its a driver issue its a quick fix.
If a company has a large quantity of PC's, they aren't buying licenses on a per PC basis, but rather a site license up to a number of PCs. They also pay for support with the site license. This makes the cost somewhat variable unless they massively overpay for an unlimited support license.
The target market for this kind of service would have to be small business (the individual consumer wants to buy an OS for $400 and use his computer for 10 years, not a license to upgrade each year, but then again, most people buy a computer to get a new OS), for whom $90/pc/year would be much better than having to buy at retail every time they upgrade.
Then again, I assume that isnt whats being referred to in the article (I dont read them, I just complain).
Doubling the number of polygons doesn't improve the graphics on today's games either.
Double the work isnt necessarily double the value.
The issue is value, and if you double the value, you can probably up the price by 5 or 10x.
If you make a new version of tic tac toe that people like, they will pay for it.
The reason that you pay more for diminishing returns is that people will pay more for that extra step. Why do people pay twice as much for a decent steak as a decent hamburger? It doesn't cost twice as much to prepare.
I know, this/., so here is a car analogy:
Take a look at the 2009 Acura and two versions of it:
The 2009 Tech package Sedan
&
The 2009 TSX tech package Sedan
One of these retails for 50k, one for 32k.
The safety features difference: The 50k car has perimiter/approach lights while the the 32k car does not.
There is also a HP difference of 201 vs 300 HP, but you aren't getting a difference if you drive in traffic.
If HP matters to you, the Honda Accord with a V6 beats both of these on mileage, costs 25k, and has 271 HP.
This beats out last years Honda Accord by a significant margin (for HP, not mileage, price, or handling, haven driven both).
Did Honda need to improve on its previous years vehicle? Not really, the 2008 Accord still wins the safety and reliability market, and quite frankly, the extra 6k it costs for the 2009 version wouldnt have been worth the money in 2008. But if you can afford either one, which do you think the average consumer is going to buy?
Public roads are paid for by people who drive cars, through registration, tickets and fines, and local taxes. If you don't use roads, you aren't paying for them.
If people are noticing that some roads are worse for their cars than others, what you will get is congestion on other roads. Those roads will deteriorate faster due to extra travel. The net cost will increase the cost of roads for everyone, not just those that now have to drive on inferior gravel ones.
At the end of the day, the users of roads are the ones who pay for them, regardless of whether its by buying tires or replacing asphalt.
While I believe that public roads are a necessity for today's world (at least in the US), it is better to buy asphalt and have people pay a little more upfront, than to leave potholes and have more accidents, damaged vehicles, and traffic.
Not only did you comment on a portion of my comment rather than the content of it, you are illiterate and a liar.
The point you quoted from me is valid, business value isn't about individuals, its about issues that affect large groups of users.
Meanwhile, the things that make Amazon, eBay, and Newegg great are not based on twitter.
Amazon is great because there is free shipping, most items are in stock, and individual issues are corrected through a feedback system, not through twitter.
Newegg has great prices on electronic components, not twitter,
eBay sucks, but not because of twitter, but because of bad customer service. You can't give anonymous feedback on sellers, so if you point out that you were shipped broken items and didnt get your money back, and that it took 9 weeks when you paid for 3 day shipping, you get bad feedback from the seller.
Developers for profitable companies don't use OpenID because most customers don't know what it is or how to use it.
You just admitted that the 140 character list does matter. If 9 out of 10 responses require more information, clearly twitter is not a useful communication medium.
These people are obviously too lazy to take the time to ask something on the support forum. FTFY.
Stop catering to the lowest common denominator and you can actually spend time improving performance instead of fixing problems that I'm guessing users could solve more quickly and efficiently through the support forum and bug tracker.
Business value isnt about the individual complaint; its about problems and tweaks that affect large groups of users.
Its not just recent episodes of The Simpsons in which they have left Springfield. Simpsons travel episodes happen so many times it would be difficult to count them all.
Heres a list of places off the top of my head, and I'm starting a 1 minute timer while create it:
England, China, Japan, Toronto, Mexico, Shelbyville, Vegas, New York City, The Super Bowl, India, Australia, Washington DC, Machu Pichu, a safari, Brazil, Italy, Alaska, France, Branson, Capitol City, Cuba, Hollywood, Florida, New Orleans, the South Pacific Islands.
I'm sure this list doubles if I take the time to think about it.
The comparative for Futurama, however, is that they travel through time, not space, as space travel is rendered obsolete (it isnt a point of interest to see different parts of the world in the year 3001, or whatever year its supposed to be now, due to the melting pot of multiple universes, we no longer care about what country or even planet the show is located).
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm... how many "scientists" did state that the sun revolves around the earth?
To be fair, at the time, using the scientific method, all evidence pointed to such a conclusion. Then, as new evidence was discovered, the idea that the earth revolves around the sun took hold. I am of course simplifying here, but this is what occurred, and this process is how we know that science works. You see, if we removed all religion and all science from humanity, and allowed them to come back, science would eventually reach the same conclusions that we have historically (ie we would eventually come up with evolution once again), but religion is a crapshoot.
The important part of your post has been left out - why one who accepts creationism is not a scientist. Of course, it is because that person's findings are not supported by evidence, are not repeatable, and thus, those findings would not be accepted by the scientific community and that scientist would not be respected by his peers.
If anything in the study should bother you, its that 84% of "scientists" believe that the earth is warming because of human activity. The scientific community believes that the earth is warming, as it has over the past century (1 degree C), it is seen as likely that over the next century the earth could warm as much as 2 or 3 degrees C. This is not, however, attributed to human activity, but rather to the natural fluctuations of the earths temperature. Otherwise, we would have to conclude that the last ice age was caused by dinosaurs not burning enough fossil fuels.
I, for one, am against government interference in the free market. On the not bat shit crazy side of economics, if one could purchase a song for 81k, and obtain distribution rights for any and all purposes perpetually, that would be a fantastic price, even for shitty top 40 songs. In fact, I'm quite certain that there are music services who pay far more for timed licenses.
The reason that people download songs without paying for them currently is because the alternative is to pay for music that is lower in quality and has no added value than free releases and torrent sites. Furthermore, the risk of penalty is akin to a speeding ticket; if one is careful, one can speed as fast as they want and watch as the guy ahead of them gets pulled over.
The RIAA and music companies are aware if the amount of downloading that exists, and furthermore, they are ok with it. If they could sell at a higher price, have more copyright infringement occur, and make more money, that is what they would do. It would be the correct business decision as well.
If they could charge less for music, increase the amount of copyright infringment, and make more money, that is what they should do.
If music companies have not done the proper research to determine what the best price for music is, at which regardless of the amount of copyright infringement that will occur, to produce the highest amount of profit, then shareholders should file a massive lawsuit for gross incompetence, remove the current leadership, and replace with people who understand their market.
Anyone care to speculate as to why this hasnt occurred?
For one thing, they could sell PDF versions for 120% of retail price, so why would they discount?
With a PDF version, you dont even have to go to the bookstore or wait on shipping, so the consumer should pay more for the convenience.
If publishers want to save on overhead, they should create a publisher website with schools, sell access during a semester to online interactive PDF versions of texts. They could easily update for new editions, change questions, allow students to highlight and make notes, and once the semester is over, no need to sellback either. Students would like it because they really could go to class with just a netbook and wireless internet access. Professors would like it because they wouldnt have to keep up with correlations to old editions. If there was enough interest in permanently owning the text, some sort of printed version could be arranged for purchase (cough). Primary school (thats stuff below college level) could be the test site for this kind of program, and publishers should give massive discounts and free trials to lock students into the concept at a young age; its just good marketing sense.
To be fair, this concept already works in practice, for example the Becker Keller CPA review course works in this manner. Many lab courses when I was an undergrad worked this way too. There is absolutely no reason that all classes shouldn't do this; they generally are online anyway.
The only people getting screwed would be those with current editions that arent updating, and those courses could simply join the online program when they do update.
Where is it legal in the U.S. to feed animal products to herbivores (that are intended for human consumption...)?
By the definition of legal.
Its certainly not illegal, and there is no reason to make it so.
There, this is legal.
The same level of logic might lead you to ask questions like "Where is it legal in the US to allow mothers to not breast feed their children?," to which I would give the same answer.
Remember, there are such things as stupid questions, and you should not ask them.
In all fairness, harnessing sea power normally requires the use of jettys, which is a major cause of red tide. In practice, a farm of sea snakes will have the same effect.While you might not personally care if a bunch of fish die, but I'm guessing environmentalists might.
In order to get the sea snakes into the ocean in the first place, portugal also needs a multiday window where the ocean is calm. Good luck with that.
The tax rate's gone up, but if consumption has gone down..."
I would assume that the two might be related...
I don't know why I bother to respond to this ignorance, but fine, here goes:
The norman conquest, lead by William the Bastard, began with the Battle of Hastings. The victory replaced the ruling class and thus changed the nationalism of England for the next 8 centuries. This change was somewhere between 5k-8k of the population in number, so the Anglo-Normans most certainly did not speak french as the language of england. The germanic language spoken prior and by the masses continuing was of course english.
The norman conquest didn't kill everyone, they just took over as a ruling class. Then again, my original point was that anglo-saxon was a nation, not a race. Thanks for heavily drawing us off topic and still being wrong.
I apologize, that should say 11-12th centuries, not 6th to 7th.
Well, retard, following the norman conquest of 1066, we had the period of Anglo-Normand England, as opposed to Anglo-Saxon. I'm guessing here, but they probably didnt need to speak French in England, since Anglo-Saxon refers to germanic tribes of Britain.
Silly me on that one. I forgot that French was spoken in England in the 6th and 7th centuries as the national language.
Maybe they learned it through Rosetta Stone?
It would be pretty easy; all they would have to do is make it so that in the event that I can afford to pay for hospital care out of pocket, that I'm stuck in line behind those who can't.
When a free market says I can't buy health care, which is what occurs in countries that have national health care, I'm fucked.
Steve Jobs recently had a kidney transplant, but if he had to wait in line, millions of Mac fanbois may have lost the face that keeps their stock price absurdly high. Won't someone please think of the fanbois?
In all seriousness, if I have to accept a doctor's opinion because he/she/it accepts nationally mandated payments, and can't recognize that my doctor doesn't barely made it through medical school and I deserve better, I promise you I would move to South Africa and buy my doctor because he/she/it is competent before I take nationalized health care.
Ask any pregnant women, and I promise she would even if her extended family can't afford it.
This is the reality we live in, private health care isn't good enough in the US.
Canada's health care system is such that if you need immediate care, you can be put on a waiting list. If you are over a certain age, you can be put on a waiting list. I don't want that, you don't want that, no one wants that. If you lose the health lottery, everyone wants to be able to buy their way out of it. Even if it means declaring bankruptcy to do it.
In England, you don't have that option,your children are liable and there isnt a person alive in England who can reasonably afford lunch, much less health care. I met a truck driver who made 80k pounds a year in 2006 who skipped out on a 30 pound tab because he couldn't afford it.
If you live in the US, I implore you, do everything you can to find national health care, even if you can afford hospital care out of pocket. It isnt worth it for the 60% of the country that pays taxes, even as that number goes down every day.
If you insist, these examples are also not races.
The concept of a Jewish race is absurd, as Judaism is a religion, not a hereditary function. You can be Israeli but not Jewish and vice-versa.
The anglo-saxons refer to people in germanic tribes in part of Britain in the middle ages. The anglo-saxon period is dead, and no one alive can reasonably claim to decend from the anglo-saxons, thanks to the norman conquest of 1066.
I'll let you do your own research on celtics and slavs, which are also nations (even if they no longer exist), not races. Geographic location is not race, even if you name every location on earth.
Up to less than a century ago, we didnt have computers, the hair dryer, the horseless carriage, or q-tips. We live in the present, where race has a different meaning than nation.
Your definition of serfdom misses part of the definition. While indentured servitude was a specified time period contract with a specific owner and a serf was a form of indentured servitude with ties to the land, neither was by default a lifelong condition. Only slavery has that distinction. A land-based serf worked in exchange for specific rights and could earn their freedom by paying off their debts. Some did it by fighting in wars where they would be expected to die. Others did it by saving their land owner's life. Still others worked long enough to pay off their debt. The russian boyar, by the way, was a class of the aristocracy, and did not own his serfs or his land, as it was given to him as a matter of title, and could be taken away by the czar at any time for any reason.
In sweden's defense, they outlawed slavery and slave trade as a matter of nationalism, not racism. England was outlawing slave trade and sweden worried that other countries would expand into their territories, so they outlawed it altogether in 1813 (even though they allowed slavery until 1847). Race, however, was not a factor.
The civil war was fought not over the right to own slaves, but rather for the right for states to make laws that were not explicitly federal laws. You may note that powers not explicitly reserved by the federal government are reserved by the states in the US constitution. The issue of slavery was simply the biggest issue that many states wanted to fight over.
On the concept, anytime there is a large scale slave revolt in history, and the slaves lost, then a country fought a war to protect slavery.
Hatred/stereotyping of Americans cannot be construed as racism, because Americans are not a race. This is nationalism, which the vast majority of Americans engage in by actively choosing to live in the US. The majority of Americans have no education or respect for human life; most europeans destroy us on all metrics of education, and believe it or not, there are atheists in the US who believe that abortion in the case where the mother would otherwise certainly die is wrong.
America is a racist country. We have a melting pot of races here, and we have affirmative action, so every race begrudges every other race, gender, religion, etc for getting advantages based on these things despite laws that prohibit it. If you don't believe this occurs you are sitting with a blindfold on and fingers in your ears. Granted, this is true in european countries, they just dont lie about it.
Its futbol, not football. At football games, we dont have teams based on states. Our university teams dont have players based on states. If we did, people would would make fun of floridians and north carolinians and new yorkers (oh wait, they do) and arizonians with regional slurs. Making fun of the french is not racism, its nationalism.
I am quite certain you were no refused service for being an american. I am quite certain that it was because you were being a pompous jackass or because you didnt speak the language or because you demanded service when they werent actually open. Having been all over europe, I can assure you that restaurants welcome americans, as we tip in countries where it isnt customary, we eat a lot, and we genuinely enjoy the process of getting to enjoy another country's culture.
Judgement and stereotyping are a defense mechanism, and in most cases protect the individual more than they harm the innocent. As long as stereotypes continue to be true, I see no problem with it. As long as I avoid certain areas because people continue to be beaten, robbed, raped, and murdered in those areas, and specific kinds of people live in those areas, and I don't get beaten, robbed, raped and murdered, I feel like that's a win for me. If it takes conscious effort to combat racism, cast aside racist judgements, and put myself in a dangerous situation despite prior knowledge to avoid that situation, then I'm glad that judgement and stereotyping are human condition. Let's face it, so are you.
In all fairness, racism is a human condition prevalent in many cultures. I remember a Swedish gentleman suggesting that Swedes have never been racist. So I pointed him to a history book, and the term serf from the fact that they took slaves from other lands they conquered.
...How exactly is or was that racism? They took slaves from other lands they conquered, but not based on race. Serf, by the way, means indentured servant, which is distinguishable from slave in that indenture servents could earn their freedom in return for working off a debt.
Thats like calling someone an anti-semite because they buy a loaf of white bread at the grocery store.
And in a few months, Outliers will go to paperback, where it will be cheaper than $9.99, and the used copies of the paperback will be around $4. Kindle prices are only good on books currently still in hardcover only. For anything else, a used paperback is almost always cheaper.
I buy books frequently (several per month), and generally stick to used paperbacks. I tend to sell the books I don't care for, and keep the ones that I will refer back to (I don't read fiction, so books have repeat value for me). I would argue that the "subsidy" you point to is no subsidy at all. I'm still significantly better off buying dead tree books rather than a Kindle version.
I do have a Sony Reader that I use to read out of copyright books and chose it because Kindle can't handle PDF well. I'm not averse to eBooks as some are. Just waiting for it to actually make financial sense.
You will still have to go to a bookstore that has outliers in stock to get it. If you happen to be at the airport, or a hotel, or the DMV, you can't get it without a Kindle. The Kindle is also useful for more than just books. If I buy a newspaper on Kindle, I can store it on Amazon's server (if you think Amazon is going out of business anytime in the relevant future I advise you to take off the tinfoil hat) and get to it in under a minute when turn my wireless back on, rather than filling my apartment with boxes or hiring a storage space just for news (yes, some of us have a very real need to reference historical financial data).
I have personal property insurance, so if my house burns down, I don't have to have a list of every book I've ever bought because when I get my replacement Kindle, all of my purchased books will still be available.
If I want a friend to borrow a book that I've purchased, I log out of my kindle, log in to his Kindle, and he can view my entire library. If I don't trust him to log out when I next need to use my Kindle, he isn't a friend. If I lend him a dead tree book, I also don't have access to it, so its a wash on availability.
Yes, you can't sell ebooks. Due to the format, this actually makes sense, because you paying for the service, not the product. You can't change the size of the text in your dead tree book. You can't erase notes and write new ones in your dead tree book. You can't get free wireless text internet in your dead tree book. You can't read samples of books that a bookstore doesn't carry or have in stock.
My Kindle 2 has no problem with PDFs, because I use my laptop for them. I'm guessing if you didnt have a Sony reader you probably would too.
That would be your strawman...I didn't say anything regarding the merits of going out of the way for Office 2007; parent and I clearly already claim to have Office 2007.
I'm not throwing out the option of retarded though.
You didnt see the disk at the top of the screen or realize that that the button next to it is a drop menu, one item in which is an labeled print preview, followed immediately by quick print?
Are you retarded or have you never actually used Office 2007?
Thats odd, I just install adblock for firefox and whenever I need drivers for anything, I just do a google search, go to the website, click the download button without having to register any personal information, and in 30 seconds to 3 minutes I'm installed, depending on the size of the download. I dont have to reboot, click on ads, go to babelfish, run winrar, change my webbrowser, or really do anything inconvenient. Then again, I run vista 64 bit, which despite the comments of numerous people who haven't used a windows OS in 10 years, is so simple to use my mother has figured it out yet has enough flexibility that I can do anything I want with it that you could do with linux.
From my perspective, broken sound would be much more difficult to troubleshoot than installing drivers. After all, if your sound doesn't work, it could be a hardware issue (your speakers are broken, your connection is broken, you plugged something incorrectly, your mute button is on, etc) or a driver issue, whereas if its a driver issue its a quick fix.
Not exactly.
If a company has a large quantity of PC's, they aren't buying licenses on a per PC basis, but rather a site license up to a number of PCs. They also pay for support with the site license. This makes the cost somewhat variable unless they massively overpay for an unlimited support license.
The target market for this kind of service would have to be small business (the individual consumer wants to buy an OS for $400 and use his computer for 10 years, not a license to upgrade each year, but then again, most people buy a computer to get a new OS), for whom $90/pc/year would be much better than having to buy at retail every time they upgrade.
Then again, I assume that isnt whats being referred to in the article (I dont read them, I just complain).
Doubling the number of polygons doesn't improve the graphics on today's games either.
Double the work isnt necessarily double the value.
The issue is value, and if you double the value, you can probably up the price by 5 or 10x.
If you make a new version of tic tac toe that people like, they will pay for it.
The reason that you pay more for diminishing returns is that people will pay more for that extra step. Why do people pay twice as much for a decent steak as a decent hamburger? It doesn't cost twice as much to prepare.
I know, this /., so here is a car analogy:
Take a look at the 2009 Acura and two versions of it:
The 2009 Tech package Sedan
&
The 2009 TSX tech package Sedan
One of these retails for 50k, one for 32k.
The safety features difference: The 50k car has perimiter/approach lights while the the 32k car does not.
There is also a HP difference of 201 vs 300 HP, but you aren't getting a difference if you drive in traffic.
If HP matters to you, the Honda Accord with a V6 beats both of these on mileage, costs 25k, and has 271 HP.
This beats out last years Honda Accord by a significant margin (for HP, not mileage, price, or handling, haven driven both).
Did Honda need to improve on its previous years vehicle? Not really, the 2008 Accord still wins the safety and reliability market, and quite frankly, the extra 6k it costs for the 2009 version wouldnt have been worth the money in 2008. But if you can afford either one, which do you think the average consumer is going to buy?
Not really.
Public roads are paid for by people who drive cars, through registration, tickets and fines, and local taxes. If you don't use roads, you aren't paying for them.
If people are noticing that some roads are worse for their cars than others, what you will get is congestion on other roads. Those roads will deteriorate faster due to extra travel. The net cost will increase the cost of roads for everyone, not just those that now have to drive on inferior gravel ones.
At the end of the day, the users of roads are the ones who pay for them, regardless of whether its by buying tires or replacing asphalt.
While I believe that public roads are a necessity for today's world (at least in the US), it is better to buy asphalt and have people pay a little more upfront, than to leave potholes and have more accidents, damaged vehicles, and traffic.
Oddly enough, there is a discount funeral store near me. You buy the package today, and when you die, everything is already taken of.
Full disclosure, I haven't bought a coffin yet.
Not only did you comment on a portion of my comment rather than the content of it, you are illiterate and a liar.
The point you quoted from me is valid, business value isn't about individuals, its about issues that affect large groups of users.
Meanwhile, the things that make Amazon, eBay, and Newegg great are not based on twitter.
Amazon is great because there is free shipping, most items are in stock, and individual issues are corrected through a feedback system, not through twitter.
Newegg has great prices on electronic components, not twitter,
eBay sucks, but not because of twitter, but because of bad customer service. You can't give anonymous feedback on sellers, so if you point out that you were shipped broken items and didnt get your money back, and that it took 9 weeks when you paid for 3 day shipping, you get bad feedback from the seller.
Developers for profitable companies don't use OpenID because most customers don't know what it is or how to use it.
You just admitted that the 140 character list does matter. If 9 out of 10 responses require more information, clearly twitter is not a useful communication medium.
These people are obviously too lazy to take the time to ask something on the support forum. FTFY.
Stop catering to the lowest common denominator and you can actually spend time improving performance instead of fixing problems that I'm guessing users could solve more quickly and efficiently through the support forum and bug tracker.
Business value isnt about the individual complaint; its about problems and tweaks that affect large groups of users.
Its not just recent episodes of The Simpsons in which they have left Springfield. Simpsons travel episodes happen so many times it would be difficult to count them all.
Heres a list of places off the top of my head, and I'm starting a 1 minute timer while create it:
England, China, Japan, Toronto, Mexico, Shelbyville, Vegas, New York City, The Super Bowl, India, Australia, Washington DC, Machu Pichu, a safari, Brazil, Italy, Alaska, France, Branson, Capitol City, Cuba, Hollywood, Florida, New Orleans, the South Pacific Islands.
I'm sure this list doubles if I take the time to think about it.
The comparative for Futurama, however, is that they travel through time, not space, as space travel is rendered obsolete (it isnt a point of interest to see different parts of the world in the year 3001, or whatever year its supposed to be now, due to the melting pot of multiple universes, we no longer care about what country or even planet the show is located).