Virgin Media claims that their broadband is "unlimited" but actually the package I am on (10 meg) is max 1.5GB between 4PM and 9PM. Go over that and you are punished with massive speed reductions that makes iPlayer and YouTube unwatchable. There are four of us in the house and we hit that limit every other day.
Isn't this the whole problem? ISPs should not be allowed to advertise their services as unlimited, because they can never actually be unlimited. They should be forced to state their usage caps clearly and up front, instead of pretending that something's unlimited and then hiding all the limits in the small print.
A mentioned earlier in this discussion by another participant, the two are not distinguishable in any meaningful way.
I won't bore you by repeating the distinction, though I will say that my comment still holds true (you are still making yourself look bad), and I will furthermore argue that you don't use bombs to wipe out political movements. You use bombs to wipe out people.
So while the US built up its nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, was the ultimate political goal the end of the communist regime in Moscow, or was it the physical obliteration of Moscow from the map?
"the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time."
is much better than:
"wiped Israel off the map"
One wipes a country off the map. One erases them from history itself.
Sorry, dude. But you're really splitting hairs here.
No, one wipes a country off the map (i.e. physically obliterates the country), while the other destroys the regime in charge of that country (in much the same way as the communist regime was "erased" from Russia). I don't think those two things are similar at all.
This whole article is about the vaccination-autism link. In this context, who cares about the rest of her "findings"? She's dead wrong on the point that the article deals with. If she's right on other things, then good for her, but so what?
Scroll up. This entire chain is MY topic. You're all replying to MY statement that she's in a better position to explore this than I am. In fact, you're the one replying to MY post!!!
So your statement that "she's in a better position" really amounts to saying that she's got more money and time than an average person. The counter-argument has been made to you that it's also vital to investigate the issue in a scientific way, according to good scientific standards, which JM does not do. So why are you moaning? You've been called out in a perfectly legitimate way. This is a discussion site.
The problem is his dismissive attitude of the other side as simply being contrarians.
Exactly right, and especially so given that this attitude is so USA-centric. It's dismissive of others countries where Nazism is not the primary association of the swastika.
No, wait: the swastika is a symbol and the war is a war. I actually think the GGP made a good point there. We should see a symbol for what it is - it might evoke something horrible but the symbol itself won't harm anyone.
I think the point is that in the World Cup, you have the best teams mixed with a lot of weaker teams. Therefore the best teams have an easier passage to the later rounds. But in the Euros you have more of a concentration of top teams.
And teams ranked higher -- in both the Elo and FIFA rankings -- than Croatia, Sweden, Ukrain, and Russia qualified for FIFA 2010 (and the only reason the European teams you point to didn't qualify is that they didn't do well enough against lower-rated European teams.)
So, again, I don't think looking at rankings, Elo or FIFA, supports an argument that the European Cup is stronger than the FIFA World Cup (and, of course, the format differences -- since the European Cup isn't a cup of national teams but of club teams -- mean that the rankings would be largely irrelevant to the comparison even if they would support the case if the UEFA Cup was a contest of national teams in Europe.)
No, I meant the UEFA European Football Championship, a.k.a. the Euros. The Champions League obviously has no relevance to national team football, I agree. And again I have to disagree with you. The concentration of top-ranked teams is higher in the Euros, so any one team's passage to the final is likely to be harder.
My bad. I was looking at the averaged rankings since 1970 rather than today's rankings.
But there is still a case for saying the European Cup is harder. Croatia, Sweden, Ukraine and Russia DNQ'd for FIFA 2010, whereas Cameroon, New Zealand and Nigeria (and of course South Africa) did.
A stronger tournament without Brazil and Argentina? Sounds unlikely.
Look up which countries actually won the World Cup, and how often. South American countries dominate the list. Even a small country like Uruguay has won it more than once.
No, that's nonsense, because if you look that up you'll be looking at results which stretch all the way back to 1930. A better plan would be to look up the current world Elo rankings, where you'll see that only three of the world's top 16 teams are non-European. So yes, it is entirely plausible to say that the European Cup is a harder tournament.
The computer industry is not exactly a free market, but then neither was the videotape or music industry (VHS, CD dominated) and things worked out okay for the consumer. They were not ripped off. Besides computers are becoming more free as Microsoft loses share (dropped below 90%) and alternative companies/browsers are chipping-away at Internet Explorer.
But none of that means anything if the different standards and platforms are not interoperable. Lack of Flash support on the iPhone would be today's salient example.
You put it in your own post: willing. Why are they not willing to buy an infinite amount of anything, if they have the money? Why doesn't bill gates have a stockpile of PS3s? Because demand simply isn't infinite, consumers want only a fixed amount of things
Your Bill Gates example misses the point. Demand curves are not about one particular person's preferences; they're about aggregates. So, looking at it more generally, people don't stockpile PS3s because they want to spend money on other things, not because they don't want more PS3s. If PS3s were a penny each, I'd grind up a bunch of them to line my drive as a cheap alternative to gravel. So perhaps I could have expressed it better by saying that demand is "practically infinite".
So when economists talk about demand curves, they are deluded because it's really a demand line, at infinity?
No, that is obviously a different sense of the word "demand". Demand curves plot the price of something against the quantity that consumers are willing and able to buy. But the original point was that higher productivity might lead to unemployment. That is obviously wrong, because, as I said, demand (in the sense of "wants") is infinite.
I agree that (government run) public education at the lower levels in the US is awful but the top private educational institutions especially at college level are the best in the world by far. Take ARWU rankings. There are 54 US universities in the top 100, and only one from Sweden. Even taking into account the difference in population size that is a big gap. It's nothing to do with the brain drain or any such nonsense. It's to do with the fact that in the US these universities operate under highly competitive environment and market forces...
Your links don't support your assertions. Take a closer look at how these rankings are compiled, and you'll see that "brain drain" is a VERY plausible explanation, especially given the poor standard of pre-university education in the US. And anyway, what is it that you think "market forces" do, in this case?
Interesting discussion! Now, what if the supposed treatment could only be administered very early in life, or even before birth? How would you decide whether or not to administer it? What if it was a treatment for, say, cystic fibrosis?
Slashdot Mirror
Honda Prius? Now *that's* what I call a hybrid!
Virgin Media claims that their broadband is "unlimited" but actually the package I am on (10 meg) is max 1.5GB between 4PM and 9PM. Go over that and you are punished with massive speed reductions that makes iPlayer and YouTube unwatchable. There are four of us in the house and we hit that limit every other day.
Isn't this the whole problem? ISPs should not be allowed to advertise their services as unlimited, because they can never actually be unlimited. They should be forced to state their usage caps clearly and up front, instead of pretending that something's unlimited and then hiding all the limits in the small print.
A mentioned earlier in this discussion by another participant, the two are not distinguishable in any meaningful way.
I won't bore you by repeating the distinction, though I will say that my comment still holds true (you are still making yourself look bad), and I will furthermore argue that you don't use bombs to wipe out political movements. You use bombs to wipe out people.
So while the US built up its nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, was the ultimate political goal the end of the communist regime in Moscow, or was it the physical obliteration of Moscow from the map?
Wow! Look at what you just posted.
Do you REALLY think that:
"the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time."
is much better than:
"wiped Israel off the map"
One wipes a country off the map. One erases them from history itself.
Sorry, dude. But you're really splitting hairs here.
No, one wipes a country off the map (i.e. physically obliterates the country), while the other destroys the regime in charge of that country (in much the same way as the communist regime was "erased" from Russia). I don't think those two things are similar at all.
Besides, it is a call to wipe Zionism from the world (which is a very legitimate decent request), not a country.
So it's ' legitimate and decent ' , to call for the wiping out of a political movement ?
Well, it can be. For example, US presidents who called for the wiping out of communism. A lot of people would say that was legitimate.
there is no ethical way to conduct a flu shot trial
Why not?
The flu shot makes me sick every time I take it. Now, please explain to me how I am wrong
Nocebo effect.
This whole article is about the vaccination-autism link. In this context, who cares about the rest of her "findings"? She's dead wrong on the point that the article deals with. If she's right on other things, then good for her, but so what?
Scroll up. This entire chain is MY topic. You're all replying to MY statement that she's in a better position to explore this than I am. In fact, you're the one replying to MY post!!!
So your statement that "she's in a better position" really amounts to saying that she's got more money and time than an average person. The counter-argument has been made to you that it's also vital to investigate the issue in a scientific way, according to good scientific standards, which JM does not do. So why are you moaning? You've been called out in a perfectly legitimate way. This is a discussion site.
The problem is his dismissive attitude of the other side as simply being contrarians.
Exactly right, and especially so given that this attitude is so USA-centric. It's dismissive of others countries where Nazism is not the primary association of the swastika.
No, wait: the swastika is a symbol and the war is a war. I actually think the GGP made a good point there. We should see a symbol for what it is - it might evoke something horrible but the symbol itself won't harm anyone.
I think the point is that in the World Cup, you have the best teams mixed with a lot of weaker teams. Therefore the best teams have an easier passage to the later rounds. But in the Euros you have more of a concentration of top teams.
And teams ranked higher -- in both the Elo and FIFA rankings -- than Croatia, Sweden, Ukrain, and Russia qualified for FIFA 2010 (and the only reason the European teams you point to didn't qualify is that they didn't do well enough against lower-rated European teams.)
So, again, I don't think looking at rankings, Elo or FIFA, supports an argument that the European Cup is stronger than the FIFA World Cup (and, of course, the format differences -- since the European Cup isn't a cup of national teams but of club teams -- mean that the rankings would be largely irrelevant to the comparison even if they would support the case if the UEFA Cup was a contest of national teams in Europe.)
No, I meant the UEFA European Football Championship, a.k.a. the Euros. The Champions League obviously has no relevance to national team football, I agree. And again I have to disagree with you. The concentration of top-ranked teams is higher in the Euros, so any one team's passage to the final is likely to be harder.
My bad. I was looking at the averaged rankings since 1970 rather than today's rankings.
But there is still a case for saying the European Cup is harder. Croatia, Sweden, Ukraine and Russia DNQ'd for FIFA 2010, whereas Cameroon, New Zealand and Nigeria (and of course South Africa) did.
A stronger tournament without Brazil and Argentina? Sounds unlikely.
Look up which countries actually won the World Cup, and how often. South American countries dominate the list. Even a small country like Uruguay has won it more than once.
No, that's nonsense, because if you look that up you'll be looking at results which stretch all the way back to 1930. A better plan would be to look up the current world Elo rankings, where you'll see that only three of the world's top 16 teams are non-European. So yes, it is entirely plausible to say that the European Cup is a harder tournament.
Yeah except now it IS just one country. 75% of the laws are written by the central EU Parliament.
(Reliable) citation needed.
The computer industry is not exactly a free market, but then neither was the videotape or music industry (VHS, CD dominated) and things worked out okay for the consumer. They were not ripped off. Besides computers are becoming more free as Microsoft loses share (dropped below 90%) and alternative companies/browsers are chipping-away at Internet Explorer.
But none of that means anything if the different standards and platforms are not interoperable. Lack of Flash support on the iPhone would be today's salient example.
Leave Microsoft and the rest alone. Reform patent and copyright law. Watch competition and innovation flourish on its own as you remove its shackles.
But how will that solve the problem of lack of interoperability? Don't you think there's value in standardisation sometimes?
Demand isn't anywhere near infinite, even for things that are free or near free.
It is practically infinite if those things have value and if you understand demand as "wants".
You put it in your own post: willing. Why are they not willing to buy an infinite amount of anything, if they have the money? Why doesn't bill gates have a stockpile of PS3s? Because demand simply isn't infinite, consumers want only a fixed amount of things
Your Bill Gates example misses the point. Demand curves are not about one particular person's preferences; they're about aggregates. So, looking at it more generally, people don't stockpile PS3s because they want to spend money on other things, not because they don't want more PS3s. If PS3s were a penny each, I'd grind up a bunch of them to line my drive as a cheap alternative to gravel. So perhaps I could have expressed it better by saying that demand is "practically infinite".
So when economists talk about demand curves, they are deluded because it's really a demand line, at infinity?
No, that is obviously a different sense of the word "demand". Demand curves plot the price of something against the quantity that consumers are willing and able to buy. But the original point was that higher productivity might lead to unemployment. That is obviously wrong, because, as I said, demand (in the sense of "wants") is infinite.
Unfortunately, if the demand for said "stuff" is finite, and each person can crank out more, then "you need less people" is *exactly* what it means.
Supply is finite, demand is infinite. That's the whole point of economics!
I agree that (government run) public education at the lower levels in the US is awful but the top private educational institutions especially at college level are the best in the world by far. Take ARWU rankings. There are 54 US universities in the top 100, and only one from Sweden. Even taking into account the difference in population size that is a big gap. It's nothing to do with the brain drain or any such nonsense. It's to do with the fact that in the US these universities operate under highly competitive environment and market forces...
Your links don't support your assertions. Take a closer look at how these rankings are compiled, and you'll see that "brain drain" is a VERY plausible explanation, especially given the poor standard of pre-university education in the US. And anyway, what is it that you think "market forces" do, in this case?
"That is something different" seems to be your soul objection. What are you trying to tell me that I don't know?
The fact that you can't explain an unknown with another unknown? The difference between "soul" and "sole"?
Yes, a physical change of state.
No, a chemical reaction.
Interesting discussion! Now, what if the supposed treatment could only be administered very early in life, or even before birth? How would you decide whether or not to administer it? What if it was a treatment for, say, cystic fibrosis?