Ooh, an early Reagan quote. Sounds more like a criticism of the Army Corps of Engineers, though, doesn't it? And the criticism could be leveled against any hydro-electric program. As for the debt, it was payed off years ago, (the quyote was from 1966) yet the project continues to protect against floods.
As for the articles on Venezuela, yes, I agree that climate change has caused some terrible tragedies already, tragedies that affect public and private concerns alike, but how does that relate to my point?
Nice anecdote. Perhaps it's even true. But the vast majority of publicly owned utilities do in fact provide better service at lower rates. Look at the TVA. Look at what happened in South America when water was privatized.
In general, privatization only works when there is a robust and competitive market. In the case of public utilities, they are a natural monopoly, and therefore, a competitive market is impossible. Cooperatives and other forms of public ownership are the most efficient way to run any form of natural monopoly.
Even if there is a market for featureless, large TVs, the manufacturing oligopoly will not create them, and the barriers to entry are to high for a newcomer to compete with the entrenched players. Thus, we will be stuck either paying for dubious features, or make do with smaller than necessary TVs.
For the record, hunger and homelessness are very big problems in the US.
I never claimed anyone was forcing anyone to buy anything, that's your straw man. I am claiming that a small oligopoly of companies would rather maintain artificially high prices through ridiculous and undesired 'features' than let the prices fall naturally.
You see, there is no profit in providing commodities. There are nice, high profits in snaring the 'early adopters' of technologies. And so, companies will not allow TVs to become commodity items, and they will do so by adding a never ending stream of useless and undesirable features, and then using the black magic propaganda of marketing to convince people they want what they don't actually want.
How can you say that some people have no meaningful work to perform when people the world over have no homes, no food, and no clean water? This is a serious disconnect in our economic system. By claiming that there is no meaningful work for some to perform, you are claiming that we have no hunger or homelessness and that is clearly untrue.
Why must an economy grow to maintain it? Isn't that a bit like a cancer?
You claim, 'people need jobs and something to work on' And yet, we have people the world over without food or shelter, at the same time we have double digit unemployment. How is it that our current economic system can not find a way to match unemployed individuals with work that needs to be done to provide even basic necessities?
How do you know anything about the OP? How can you say they know nothing about the engineering and development that goes into the world?
The point the OP was trying to make is that high end TVs are overpriced and laden with features that most of us don't want or need, just to justify the price increase. Without these continual 'improvements,' companies would not be able to justify their high margins and prices would come down more quickly.
That's the OP's theory, anyway. But rather than address the theory, you engage in personal attacks against the individual making them.
Way to miss the point. No one is complaining about the lack of free-or-cheap televisions. The complaint is with powerful oligopolies manipulating markets.
Well, I wasn't, but since you brought it up, I think we must ask ourselves: Does Bennett Hasselton write lengthy articles to make up for having a small penis? And just how small is it? I mean, are we talking three inch pencil dick, or the kind of micropenis that would look too small as a girl's clit? Inquiring trolls want to know.
Yes, I have self identified as a troll here as far back as I can remember. It used to be a badge of honor. We had the 'trolltalk' secret story ID, troll Tuesdays, some of the best trolls on teh intarwebz, and we were, as we used to say, 'on teh spoke.' Nowadays, trolling has become a lost art.
Mostly nowadays I troll libertarians. They're a very easy target.
Do you suffer from MUS (Multiple Urine Streams)? Are your trips to the bathroom blighted by UPTs (Unpredictable Piss Trajectories)? Well, fear not, you are not alone. Research has shown that in 99% of cases, MUS and UPTs are caused by two factors; either debris trapped in your glans, or a poorly configured foreskin. Well, your toilet seat soaking days could now be over, as a revolutionary GIMP plugin written by prolific rock-ballad artist Meatloaf will solve *all* your bathroom carpet dampening needs.
Simply use your favourite digital camera/camera phone to take a photograph of your penis before you are about to urinate, transfer it to your Linux-based laptop, and Meatloaf's incredible software processes the image using advanced techniques like Neural Nets, Stochastic Sampling and Genetic Algorithms to analyse the configuration of your bell-end, and give advice helping you to avoid both MUS and UPTs. The software is also written in 100% x86 assembly language, taking advantage of Meatloaf's decades of experience working with Intel's modern processors, to deliver accurate results in seconds.
Order it now, and banish piss soaked carpets from your life forever.
I tried this and now my penis looks really blurry and pixelated.
Let's take a step back here. My post, the one you answered, reads like this:
"Then how is it, in games like Gran Turismo with real world cars and tracks, that actual race car drivers turn in near-identical times on virtual and real tracks with the same car?
A car traveling 300 Km/h travels 300,000 m/h, or 83.3 m/s. At 30 frames per second, that's around 3 meters per frame. Are you saying this isn't possible to calculate?"
Now, here's your reply to that:
Scale.
The car next to you is a few inches long on screen, in real life it appears much bigger.
So if the car moves x number of car lengths a second, in real life you may get blur, but on screen your eye can cope with it.
I am willing to be that no amount of frame-rate will get natural motion blur in a game.
A car crossing your entire screen is not crossing your entire field of vision.
I don't know if it used motion blur, but F-zero GX did feel really fast when playing it, most games not as much to me.
Can you explain how what you wrote in reply applies to what I wrote? It isn't even answering the question I asked.
But let me just ask you this, to perhaps clear things up: do you think a movie of a car moving at 300km/h will show motion blur in each individual frame? What if the movie were shot using a high speed camera, say, 100,000 frames per second? Would individual frames show any motion blur then? I don't think they would. Yet, when shown, I do believe the eye would see motion blur.
Okay, so then, what if we simulated a car moving at 300km/h, at 24 frames per second. Obviously, if the 24 frame per second movie contains motion blur in each frame, our simulation would too. We don't have the tech to do 100,000 frames per second, but if we did, then I don't think we'd need to show motion blur either, the eye would create it.
Why can't it render something moving at 300km/h? Could it show a movie of something filmed moving at 300km/h? If so, then it could render it. I'm sorry, but this explanation makes no sense.
I could give a crap how you actually feel, or how black people might feel. I'm not offended. We're both playing the same game here, offend the easily offended. But here we are, both feeling the need to justify our comments. Strange, don't you think? I mean, if you really feel the way you claim to, why even bother to respond to me? Perhaps I hit a nerve? A very small nerve, perhaps?
It seems you don't understand my analogy, which is why I keep making it. Let me be clear. Given 100cc of water in a beaker of known size and composition, over a Bunsen burner of known BTU output, can you predict when it will boil? Yes, you can. Can you predict where the very first bubble to break the surface will do so? No, you can't. Climate prediction is not like weather prediction. Weather prediction is like predicting when and where the first bubble will burst. Climate prediction is like saying, 'given this amount of water in this kind of beaker with this amount of heat input, it will take 10 minutes for it to boil.' Even though the actual heat transfer from burner to water is chaotic, the larger system is not.
Quantum mechanics would be another example. The collapse of a wave function is chaotic or nondeterministic. Yet the bulk behavior of materials is NOT chaotic or nondeterministic, even though it is based on behavior that is. The random variations even out on a larger scale, much like the random variations of weather even out on the scale of climate.
The fact that average temperatures for a given year are outside of the prediction for that year does not invalidate the model, as long as the general trends remain within the margins for error. Any scientist will recognize that a single outlier does not invalidate a model.
As for calling you an amateur, are you paid for your work in the field? If not, sorry, but you are an amateur.
Slashdot Mirror
Ooh, an early Reagan quote. Sounds more like a criticism of the Army Corps of Engineers, though, doesn't it? And the criticism could be leveled against any hydro-electric program. As for the debt, it was payed off years ago, (the quyote was from 1966) yet the project continues to protect against floods.
As for the articles on Venezuela, yes, I agree that climate change has caused some terrible tragedies already, tragedies that affect public and private concerns alike, but how does that relate to my point?
Nice anecdote. Perhaps it's even true. But the vast majority of publicly owned utilities do in fact provide better service at lower rates. Look at the TVA. Look at what happened in South America when water was privatized.
In general, privatization only works when there is a robust and competitive market. In the case of public utilities, they are a natural monopoly, and therefore, a competitive market is impossible. Cooperatives and other forms of public ownership are the most efficient way to run any form of natural monopoly.
If you do agree to be throttled, please take precautions to make sure you don't end up like David Carradine.
Too soon?
Even if there is a market for featureless, large TVs, the manufacturing oligopoly will not create them, and the barriers to entry are to high for a newcomer to compete with the entrenched players. Thus, we will be stuck either paying for dubious features, or make do with smaller than necessary TVs.
For the record, hunger and homelessness are very big problems in the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
I never claimed anyone was forcing anyone to buy anything, that's your straw man. I am claiming that a small oligopoly of companies would rather maintain artificially high prices through ridiculous and undesired 'features' than let the prices fall naturally.
You see, there is no profit in providing commodities. There are nice, high profits in snaring the 'early adopters' of technologies. And so, companies will not allow TVs to become commodity items, and they will do so by adding a never ending stream of useless and undesirable features, and then using the black magic propaganda of marketing to convince people they want what they don't actually want.
How can you say that some people have no meaningful work to perform when people the world over have no homes, no food, and no clean water? This is a serious disconnect in our economic system. By claiming that there is no meaningful work for some to perform, you are claiming that we have no hunger or homelessness and that is clearly untrue.
Why must an economy grow to maintain it? Isn't that a bit like a cancer?
You claim, 'people need jobs and something to work on' And yet, we have people the world over without food or shelter, at the same time we have double digit unemployment. How is it that our current economic system can not find a way to match unemployed individuals with work that needs to be done to provide even basic necessities?
How do you know anything about the OP? How can you say they know nothing about the engineering and development that goes into the world?
The point the OP was trying to make is that high end TVs are overpriced and laden with features that most of us don't want or need, just to justify the price increase. Without these continual 'improvements,' companies would not be able to justify their high margins and prices would come down more quickly.
That's the OP's theory, anyway. But rather than address the theory, you engage in personal attacks against the individual making them.
Way to miss the point. No one is complaining about the lack of free-or-cheap televisions. The complaint is with powerful oligopolies manipulating markets.
Apparently the mods today are actually Glen Beck fans without senses of humor...
But you repeat yourself.
Got it in one.
Well, I wasn't, but since you brought it up, I think we must ask ourselves: Does Bennett Hasselton write lengthy articles to make up for having a small penis? And just how small is it? I mean, are we talking three inch pencil dick, or the kind of micropenis that would look too small as a girl's clit? Inquiring trolls want to know.
Wow, Bennett. You sure do like the sound of your own typing, don't you? You could really have said all that in 1/10th the space.
Yes, I have self identified as a troll here as far back as I can remember. It used to be a badge of honor. We had the 'trolltalk' secret story ID, troll Tuesdays, some of the best trolls on teh intarwebz, and we were, as we used to say, 'on teh spoke.' Nowadays, trolling has become a lost art.
Mostly nowadays I troll libertarians. They're a very easy target.
Commit yourself daily to serving The Lord
With some fava beans and a nice Chianti, fthfthfthfth.
But we're talking about models of reality. Theories. Those have to make sense.
Do you suffer from MUS (Multiple Urine Streams)? Are your trips to the bathroom blighted by UPTs (Unpredictable Piss Trajectories)? Well, fear not, you are not alone. Research has shown that in 99% of cases, MUS and UPTs are caused by two factors; either debris trapped in your glans, or a poorly configured foreskin. Well, your toilet seat soaking days could now be over, as a revolutionary GIMP plugin written by prolific rock-ballad artist Meatloaf will solve *all* your bathroom carpet dampening needs.
Simply use your favourite digital camera/camera phone to take a photograph of your penis before you are about to urinate, transfer it to your Linux-based laptop, and Meatloaf's incredible software processes the image using advanced techniques like Neural Nets, Stochastic Sampling and Genetic Algorithms to analyse the configuration of your bell-end, and give advice helping you to avoid both MUS and UPTs. The software is also written in 100% x86 assembly language, taking advantage of Meatloaf's decades of experience working with Intel's modern processors, to deliver accurate results in seconds.
Order it now, and banish piss soaked carpets from your life forever.
I tried this and now my penis looks really blurry and pixelated.
They bitch when Linux does that, too. What can I say? People, in general, are ignorant.
It would be even more fitting if he simply ate them.
Let's take a step back here. My post, the one you answered, reads like this:
"Then how is it, in games like Gran Turismo with real world cars and tracks, that actual race car drivers turn in near-identical times on virtual and real tracks with the same car?
A car traveling 300 Km/h travels 300,000 m/h, or 83.3 m/s. At 30 frames per second, that's around 3 meters per frame. Are you saying this isn't possible to calculate?"
Now, here's your reply to that:
Scale.
The car next to you is a few inches long on screen, in real life it appears much bigger.
So if the car moves x number of car lengths a second, in real life you may get blur, but on screen your eye can cope with it.
I am willing to be that no amount of frame-rate will get natural motion blur in a game.
A car crossing your entire screen is not crossing your entire field of vision.
I don't know if it used motion blur, but F-zero GX did feel really fast when playing it, most games not as much to me.
Can you explain how what you wrote in reply applies to what I wrote? It isn't even answering the question I asked.
But let me just ask you this, to perhaps clear things up: do you think a movie of a car moving at 300km/h will show motion blur in each individual frame? What if the movie were shot using a high speed camera, say, 100,000 frames per second? Would individual frames show any motion blur then? I don't think they would. Yet, when shown, I do believe the eye would see motion blur.
Okay, so then, what if we simulated a car moving at 300km/h, at 24 frames per second. Obviously, if the 24 frame per second movie contains motion blur in each frame, our simulation would too. We don't have the tech to do 100,000 frames per second, but if we did, then I don't think we'd need to show motion blur either, the eye would create it.
What? Sorry, this makes no sense. Can your monitor display a movie of a car moving at 300km/h? Then it could render the same thing in a game.
Or are you saying, "A movie of a car is not the same thing as a car?" Because if you are saying that, then thank you captain obvious.
Why can't it render something moving at 300km/h? Could it show a movie of something filmed moving at 300km/h? If so, then it could render it. I'm sorry, but this explanation makes no sense.
I could give a crap how you actually feel, or how black people might feel. I'm not offended. We're both playing the same game here, offend the easily offended. But here we are, both feeling the need to justify our comments. Strange, don't you think? I mean, if you really feel the way you claim to, why even bother to respond to me? Perhaps I hit a nerve? A very small nerve, perhaps?
Who said anything about after the baby? When it comes to Kari, I'm just not that picky.
It seems you don't understand my analogy, which is why I keep making it. Let me be clear. Given 100cc of water in a beaker of known size and composition, over a Bunsen burner of known BTU output, can you predict when it will boil? Yes, you can. Can you predict where the very first bubble to break the surface will do so? No, you can't. Climate prediction is not like weather prediction. Weather prediction is like predicting when and where the first bubble will burst. Climate prediction is like saying, 'given this amount of water in this kind of beaker with this amount of heat input, it will take 10 minutes for it to boil.' Even though the actual heat transfer from burner to water is chaotic, the larger system is not.
Quantum mechanics would be another example. The collapse of a wave function is chaotic or nondeterministic. Yet the bulk behavior of materials is NOT chaotic or nondeterministic, even though it is based on behavior that is. The random variations even out on a larger scale, much like the random variations of weather even out on the scale of climate.
The fact that average temperatures for a given year are outside of the prediction for that year does not invalidate the model, as long as the general trends remain within the margins for error. Any scientist will recognize that a single outlier does not invalidate a model.
As for calling you an amateur, are you paid for your work in the field? If not, sorry, but you are an amateur.
And I predict this will be the year of 'Spun getting freaky with Kari Byron of MythBusters.'
and what exactly is the point of having RAM go unused?
File cache. RAM unused by bloated applications gets used by (most) operating systems to cache files, resulting in quicker disk access.