I've never understood why so many people buy playstations.
The only thing that matters is the games.
Which system has the games you want to play on it? You buy that one. That's it.
For anybody who is so strapped for cash that the cost is a deciding factor, they're better off playing games on a previous-gen system they got at a pawn shop. Graphics, ease of use, versatility, battery life, branding -- none of those things actually matter. People look at what games are out, decide which games they want to play, and then buy the system they need to play them. "But multiplatform games", you say -- but almost nobody plays exclusively multiplatform games. The deciding factor is still which system has the exclusives you want.
Why do people buy Playstations? Persona 5, God of War, Bloodborne, Utawarerumono (if you're me). There are more, but I feel like that's enough to make the point. There you go.
I hate Sony's censorship policy, and if I have the option to buy a multiplatform game for another system, I'll do it, but at the end of the day, if my favorite developer makes a game that's PS5-exclusive, I guess I'm buying a PS5.
Natural selection as an evolutionary pressure applies to a species, not individuals.
This is natural selection at work. We, as a species, are capable of procreating and keeping our progeny alive where other creatures would die. That's why we've taken over the planet.
Paying a 10% tax on a net ($30K - 25K) $5000 is $500, or about (500/30000) 1.7%. Paying 10% on a net ($10MM - 25K) $9,975,000 is $997,500, or about (997,500/10,000,000) 9.975%. Seems proportionally speaking, it's about 6.23 times more taxes. Hardly "nothing", proportionally speaking.
In other words, somebody who makes 200 times more money has a tax rate that is only 6.23 times higher.
You are correct, in a statistical sense that's not "nothing," and I will redact my previous statement of "That's nothing" and change it to "That's trivial", if that satisfies you.
Income - PovertyLine = Taxable income. With a flat tax, calculating the amount is easy.
The problem with this scheme is that while it seems reasonable for low-to-middle income levels, it doesn't scale up reasonably for high incomes.
For somebody who makes $10M / year, they'd pay just shy of $1M / year in taxes. That's nothing, proportionally speaking. $9M / year is still ludicrously wealthy and more money than any single person needs. That's enough to own multiple fully-staffed mansions across the world, your own private jet, and pay for everything your children and your children's children could ever want. Somebody who makes that much money needs to be taxed more heavily to prevent family dynasties and massive wealth gaps (such as we're seeing right now in the USA thanks to very low corporate tax rates and tons of regressive taxes that target low incomes).
So then the question is, just how much should the top earners be taxed? What does the curve look like as income scales up? How do you design the curve so that people can't gain the system by intentionally earning "less" so that they don't pay as much in taxes as they would if they made more and thus have more take-home income?
Making things even more complicated is that top earners often aren't actually paid in real dollars. How do you tax real estate or property that is given as a "gift"? What about company stocks? And how do you write all these tax laws in a way such that a team of corporate lawyers can't find a loophole around them?
What seems simple at first rapidly becomes very complex when you dig into it.
You can fool any phone's fingerprint sensor with a simple rip of a fingerprint.
Actually, you can't. Most phone "fingerprint scanners" are actually capacitive sensors that measure electrical responses in your fingertip. They're not impossible to fool, but you can't do it with just a picture of somebody's finger.
That's why it's noteworthy that the S10, Samsung's latest and greatest phone, is using an ultrasonic sensor, which is apparently much easier to fool than previous-generation tech.
Those who can't play by the rules, should not participate in making the rules while they are in "time out".
Are you sure you've never, ever broken the rules? You've never downloaded an MP3 or watched a Youtube video of a song you didn't pay for? Never ran a red light? Never left a grocery store with an item you didn't pay for? Never been in possession of a controlled substance (prescription drug or otherwise) that you shouldn't have?
I'll bet you've done at least one of those things, even if accidentally, and you got away with it. Do you still vote, or do you do the right thing and refrain from voting since you don't deserve any rights now?
I also think there are plenty of nonsensical, non-victim "crimes" that should be abolished... and that is also quite a different matter.
It's not really a different matter as long as people who are guilty of the crimes you think should be abolished are still being imprisoned and denied the right to vote.
For FUCK'S SAKE, it's the 21st century and we still do shit like this? Really, humans? Seriously!?
Just look around in the comments section here. You'd like to think that Slashdot is visited by well-read, thoughtful individuals, right? People who are capable of empathizing with others and thinking through the consequences of how other people are treated?
Nope, it's thread after thread of bloodthirsty spectators who think that somebody who gets caught with half an ounce of marijuana should be thrown in a federal penitentiary, cut off from all human contact, and waterboarded for ten years. As soon as you break The Law you are an inhuman mongrel who deserves whatever the system does to you.
While the folks who are in charge of our justice system typically have a little bit more education in criminal justice, they still come from the same pool.
Probably because computers never get distracted, never blink, never sleep, are capable of knowing the vehicle's exact state at every moment, and can constantly watch a 360 degree arc around them, and that eliminates most of the causes of human accidents.
And that is the attitude I'd expect from somebody whose most complex science education was high school-level chemistry and was later reinforced by ignorant bigots spouting memes.
Sex isn't even binary, it's a bimodal distribution. Your genes have a strong influence on that, but there are people with XX chromosomes who produce sperm and XY chromosomes who have ovaries. And on top of that, there are half a dozen other ways your chromosomes can be configured, and your hormone distribution can change things on top of that. Most people have XX or XY chromosomes and can be broadly classified as female or male because of that, but that's incredibly reductive -- everybody's sex is unique to them. Your desire to shove everything into a simple box is not actually scientific at all.
And given that actual, physical sex is that complicated, you think that gender, a mental construct, can be easily divided into two categories? That's as scientific as saying that the tides and lightning happen because God.
Many banks require that you keep a minimum amount of cash in your account at all times and will charge monthly fees if you drop below that, which is another thing that is tough for the poor. Almost all ATMs charge a fee for withdrawing cash, and that fee is proportionally quite large if you're just withdrawing a small amount. ATMs owned by your bank or your bank's teller probably won't charge you a fee, but that's very inconvenient if you don't have a bank located right next to wherever you're doing your shopping.
Security and customer protection on most debit cards in the USA is also quite poor. Many card readers only require a signature to complete a transaction, and no verification is done on that. You can dispute fraudulent charges on a credit card, but many banks will not allow that on a debit card; that means that if somebody steals your debit card and uses it before you can cancel it, you've lost all of your money. That's worse than leaving most of your money somewhere safe and just carrying around a few bills with you.
I know I've said "many banks" several times, and there are definitely banks for which some of those complaints don't comply -- but good luck finding a bank for which none of those apply and it's located somewhere remotely close to you.
And, of course, any time you use a card associated with a bank account, it's trivial to trace it back to you. Many people do not want their purchases to be associated with them in a private company's database.
Debit cards are handy, but are absolutely not a replacement for cash.
Hahaha. A good -- not great, just good -- road bike will cost you $500. And that's not a one-time fee; if you use it regularly, you'll be spending money yearly on repairs and maintenance.
And you also have to worry about transporting the bike to wherever you want to use it (if it's a "last mile" solution for you after using public transit or a personal automobile), finding a place to chain it up, and if somebody cuts through your chain and walks off with your bike, you're out $500. And this is probably hard for you to understand, but there are some people for whom the physical exertion involved in riding a bicycle is, in fact, a legitimate problem.
This is literally a huge case of "check your privilege". Just because you don't personally find shared scooters to be useful doesn't mean that nobody does.
Maybe I'm to old to understand the attraction to these things.
Imagine, if you can, that there is a place you need to physically be. Let's say it's a place you could physically walk to, but maybe doing so would take longer than you'd like, plus if you're not in good physical condition -- which I'd expect a old person would be able to sympathize with! -- it may be physically taxing or difficult to walk that long. Even for a young, fit person, if the weather isn't very nice, you might arrive either all hot and sweaty or half-frozen.
Now, imagine that I've got a vehicle you can ride that will get you there in a third of the time and with minimal physical effort, and it'll only cost you about a dollar. To top it off, you don't have to worry about maintenance or security. Do you see the attraction now?
You're faulting the folks who picked an FS and stuck with it for 26 years
Are you talking about FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, exFAT, NTFS 1.0, NTFS 1.1, NTFS 1.2, NTFS 3.0, or NTFS 3.1?
To be fair, many of those are backwards-compatible with previous versions, but if you're going to collapse them down like that, it's only fair to do the same with Ext.
Well, for one, I think that anybody who has ever spent more than ten minutes looking at free speech laws or the history of government censorship in the USA would be strongly opposed to this.
While it's disgusting that these bills even got proposed, it's likely that the legislators know that they'll get destroyed if they're ever challenged in the courts. These sorts of things usually get proposed just to pander to the more ignorant parts of their constituency.
Actually, I'd say that there are advertisements that aren't morally wrong. A company that advertises its product by simply stating what it is and how it compares to its competition is doing nothing wrong -- and, in fact, that's how advertisements basically worked before the 1920's. People writing advertisements assumed that other people were rational actors, and that if you wanted somebody to buy your product, you simply had to demonstrate that you made the best product.
That is, until Edward Bernays, arguably the second most evil man of the 20th century, discovered the concept of exploiting peoples' emotions in order to convince them to buy things they didn't need. That turned out to be shockingly effective, and it's all been downhill since then.
Except for the fact I don't know anyone personally who has a Play Station.
I'm really skeptical of that; I suspect you don't interview everybody you know and tally up what game consoles they have.
That and looking at the Titles available, I cannot find anything that really sparks my interest. To be fair, I have a Wii-U and usually just me and my wife play monopoly on it.
It sounds like you're simply not part of the video game market at all. That's fine, but I don't think you know enough about the market to speak about it with any authority.
There are a LOT of people all over North America that have problems with wheat. If they go somewhere like France (where it is Illegal to grow/use GMO wheat) they can eat anything, but the moment they get home, the problems start again.
That's an interesting assertion, can you show any studies done on a statistically significant group of people who cannot consume wheat in the USA but can abroad?
If the wheat is modified to be "resistant to bugs" so that the bugs can no longer eat it, what makes the engineers think it's still food for humans?
Well, the traits that make plants resistant to bugs frequently do not affect humans at all. Look at how voraciously humans consume peppers that are high in capsaicin, for example.
Is it little wonder that so many people are having trouble processing wheat (or other GMO foods)?
Less than 1% of the population has celiac disease, and somewhere around 0.4% actually have a wheat allergy. We could argue about whether that counts as "so many," but I have been unable to find any indication that there's a difference in those numbers based on nationality or whether you're eating GMO wheat or not.
There are so many sources on Youtube alone (yes, I know, that's not the best source, but come on!)
Youtube isn't "not the best source," it's a horrible source. It's filled with crackpot nutjobs who have no evidence and think that owning a camera makes them an expert.
Feel free to Google it for yourselves!
I did and found nothing. Can you provide a source that is actually backed by evidence?
slow to start... slow to launch VMs... slow to shutdown VMs
looks very childish.
In all seriousness, if startup/shutdown performance is so important to you that an extra second is enough to make you roll back versions, why are you using the GUI?
In other words: the family is almost dead. Is it good or bad? Does not matter. It's inevitable because destruction of the family reflects the current economic basis of society: post-industrial society with consumer economics.
"The family" is very much still alive. The concept you have idealized in your head is simply no longer accepted as the only type of family. Families with divorced parents are not "broken," and you demonizing them does nothing to help.
I, for one, will not mourn the loss of children growing up in households where mommy and daddy are constantly angry and fighting with each other just because it's socially unacceptable for them to go their separate ways.
You would think that somebody with a uid as low as yours would have noticed by now that sometime Slashdot posts articles about non-techy things when they are of significant cultural relevance. "Stuff that matters", as the tagline goes.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never understood why so many people buy playstations.
The only thing that matters is the games.
Which system has the games you want to play on it? You buy that one. That's it.
For anybody who is so strapped for cash that the cost is a deciding factor, they're better off playing games on a previous-gen system they got at a pawn shop. Graphics, ease of use, versatility, battery life, branding -- none of those things actually matter. People look at what games are out, decide which games they want to play, and then buy the system they need to play them. "But multiplatform games", you say -- but almost nobody plays exclusively multiplatform games. The deciding factor is still which system has the exclusives you want.
Why do people buy Playstations? Persona 5, God of War, Bloodborne, Utawarerumono (if you're me). There are more, but I feel like that's enough to make the point. There you go.
I hate Sony's censorship policy, and if I have the option to buy a multiplatform game for another system, I'll do it, but at the end of the day, if my favorite developer makes a game that's PS5-exclusive, I guess I'm buying a PS5.
Natural selection as an evolutionary pressure applies to a species, not individuals.
This is natural selection at work. We, as a species, are capable of procreating and keeping our progeny alive where other creatures would die. That's why we've taken over the planet.
Paying a 10% tax on a net ($30K - 25K) $5000 is $500, or about (500/30000) 1.7%. Paying 10% on a net ($10MM - 25K) $9,975,000 is $997,500, or about (997,500/10,000,000) 9.975%. Seems proportionally speaking, it's about 6.23 times more taxes. Hardly "nothing", proportionally speaking.
In other words, somebody who makes 200 times more money has a tax rate that is only 6.23 times higher.
You are correct, in a statistical sense that's not "nothing," and I will redact my previous statement of "That's nothing" and change it to "That's trivial", if that satisfies you.
This part is easy to solve, and I believe income taxes in the US already work this way.
Yes, and I was illustrating why US income taxes are bracketed the way they are and why a single flat percentage tax isn't workable. Thanks.
Income - PovertyLine = Taxable income. With a flat tax, calculating the amount is easy.
The problem with this scheme is that while it seems reasonable for low-to-middle income levels, it doesn't scale up reasonably for high incomes.
For somebody who makes $10M / year, they'd pay just shy of $1M / year in taxes. That's nothing, proportionally speaking. $9M / year is still ludicrously wealthy and more money than any single person needs. That's enough to own multiple fully-staffed mansions across the world, your own private jet, and pay for everything your children and your children's children could ever want. Somebody who makes that much money needs to be taxed more heavily to prevent family dynasties and massive wealth gaps (such as we're seeing right now in the USA thanks to very low corporate tax rates and tons of regressive taxes that target low incomes).
So then the question is, just how much should the top earners be taxed? What does the curve look like as income scales up? How do you design the curve so that people can't gain the system by intentionally earning "less" so that they don't pay as much in taxes as they would if they made more and thus have more take-home income?
Making things even more complicated is that top earners often aren't actually paid in real dollars. How do you tax real estate or property that is given as a "gift"? What about company stocks? And how do you write all these tax laws in a way such that a team of corporate lawyers can't find a loophole around them?
What seems simple at first rapidly becomes very complex when you dig into it.
You can fool any phone's fingerprint sensor with a simple rip of a fingerprint.
Actually, you can't. Most phone "fingerprint scanners" are actually capacitive sensors that measure electrical responses in your fingertip. They're not impossible to fool, but you can't do it with just a picture of somebody's finger.
That's why it's noteworthy that the S10, Samsung's latest and greatest phone, is using an ultrasonic sensor, which is apparently much easier to fool than previous-generation tech.
Those who can't play by the rules, should not participate in making the rules while they are in "time out".
Are you sure you've never, ever broken the rules? You've never downloaded an MP3 or watched a Youtube video of a song you didn't pay for? Never ran a red light? Never left a grocery store with an item you didn't pay for? Never been in possession of a controlled substance (prescription drug or otherwise) that you shouldn't have?
I'll bet you've done at least one of those things, even if accidentally, and you got away with it. Do you still vote, or do you do the right thing and refrain from voting since you don't deserve any rights now?
I also think there are plenty of nonsensical, non-victim "crimes" that should be abolished... and that is also quite a different matter.
It's not really a different matter as long as people who are guilty of the crimes you think should be abolished are still being imprisoned and denied the right to vote.
For FUCK'S SAKE, it's the 21st century and we still do shit like this? Really, humans? Seriously!?
Just look around in the comments section here. You'd like to think that Slashdot is visited by well-read, thoughtful individuals, right? People who are capable of empathizing with others and thinking through the consequences of how other people are treated?
Nope, it's thread after thread of bloodthirsty spectators who think that somebody who gets caught with half an ounce of marijuana should be thrown in a federal penitentiary, cut off from all human contact, and waterboarded for ten years. As soon as you break The Law you are an inhuman mongrel who deserves whatever the system does to you.
While the folks who are in charge of our justice system typically have a little bit more education in criminal justice, they still come from the same pool.
Probably because computers never get distracted, never blink, never sleep, are capable of knowing the vehicle's exact state at every moment, and can constantly watch a 360 degree arc around them, and that eliminates most of the causes of human accidents.
That is how science classifies him.
And that is the attitude I'd expect from somebody whose most complex science education was high school-level chemistry and was later reinforced by ignorant bigots spouting memes.
Sex isn't even binary, it's a bimodal distribution. Your genes have a strong influence on that, but there are people with XX chromosomes who produce sperm and XY chromosomes who have ovaries. And on top of that, there are half a dozen other ways your chromosomes can be configured, and your hormone distribution can change things on top of that. Most people have XX or XY chromosomes and can be broadly classified as female or male because of that, but that's incredibly reductive -- everybody's sex is unique to them. Your desire to shove everything into a simple box is not actually scientific at all.
And given that actual, physical sex is that complicated, you think that gender, a mental construct, can be easily divided into two categories? That's as scientific as saying that the tides and lightning happen because God.
Here's a more detailed thread from an actual biologist on the subject, if you're willing to read: https://twitter.com/ScienceVet2/status/1035246030500061184
Many banks require that you keep a minimum amount of cash in your account at all times and will charge monthly fees if you drop below that, which is another thing that is tough for the poor. Almost all ATMs charge a fee for withdrawing cash, and that fee is proportionally quite large if you're just withdrawing a small amount. ATMs owned by your bank or your bank's teller probably won't charge you a fee, but that's very inconvenient if you don't have a bank located right next to wherever you're doing your shopping.
Security and customer protection on most debit cards in the USA is also quite poor. Many card readers only require a signature to complete a transaction, and no verification is done on that. You can dispute fraudulent charges on a credit card, but many banks will not allow that on a debit card; that means that if somebody steals your debit card and uses it before you can cancel it, you've lost all of your money. That's worse than leaving most of your money somewhere safe and just carrying around a few bills with you.
I know I've said "many banks" several times, and there are definitely banks for which some of those complaints don't comply -- but good luck finding a bank for which none of those apply and it's located somewhere remotely close to you.
And, of course, any time you use a card associated with a bank account, it's trivial to trace it back to you. Many people do not want their purchases to be associated with them in a private company's database.
Debit cards are handy, but are absolutely not a replacement for cash.
fairly inexpensive
Hahaha. A good -- not great, just good -- road bike will cost you $500. And that's not a one-time fee; if you use it regularly, you'll be spending money yearly on repairs and maintenance.
And you also have to worry about transporting the bike to wherever you want to use it (if it's a "last mile" solution for you after using public transit or a personal automobile), finding a place to chain it up, and if somebody cuts through your chain and walks off with your bike, you're out $500. And this is probably hard for you to understand, but there are some people for whom the physical exertion involved in riding a bicycle is, in fact, a legitimate problem.
This is literally a huge case of "check your privilege". Just because you don't personally find shared scooters to be useful doesn't mean that nobody does.
Maybe I'm to old to understand the attraction to these things.
Imagine, if you can, that there is a place you need to physically be. Let's say it's a place you could physically walk to, but maybe doing so would take longer than you'd like, plus if you're not in good physical condition -- which I'd expect a old person would be able to sympathize with! -- it may be physically taxing or difficult to walk that long. Even for a young, fit person, if the weather isn't very nice, you might arrive either all hot and sweaty or half-frozen.
Now, imagine that I've got a vehicle you can ride that will get you there in a third of the time and with minimal physical effort, and it'll only cost you about a dollar. To top it off, you don't have to worry about maintenance or security. Do you see the attraction now?
You're faulting the folks who picked an FS and stuck with it for 26 years
Are you talking about FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, exFAT, NTFS 1.0, NTFS 1.1, NTFS 1.2, NTFS 3.0, or NTFS 3.1?
To be fair, many of those are backwards-compatible with previous versions, but if you're going to collapse them down like that, it's only fair to do the same with Ext.
Well, for one, I think that anybody who has ever spent more than ten minutes looking at free speech laws or the history of government censorship in the USA would be strongly opposed to this.
While it's disgusting that these bills even got proposed, it's likely that the legislators know that they'll get destroyed if they're ever challenged in the courts. These sorts of things usually get proposed just to pander to the more ignorant parts of their constituency.
Actually, I'd say that there are advertisements that aren't morally wrong. A company that advertises its product by simply stating what it is and how it compares to its competition is doing nothing wrong -- and, in fact, that's how advertisements basically worked before the 1920's. People writing advertisements assumed that other people were rational actors, and that if you wanted somebody to buy your product, you simply had to demonstrate that you made the best product.
That is, until Edward Bernays, arguably the second most evil man of the 20th century, discovered the concept of exploiting peoples' emotions in order to convince them to buy things they didn't need. That turned out to be shockingly effective, and it's all been downhill since then.
Except for the fact I don't know anyone personally who has a Play Station.
I'm really skeptical of that; I suspect you don't interview everybody you know and tally up what game consoles they have.
That and looking at the Titles available, I cannot find anything that really sparks my interest. To be fair, I have a Wii-U and usually just me and my wife play monopoly on it.
It sounds like you're simply not part of the video game market at all. That's fine, but I don't think you know enough about the market to speak about it with any authority.
There are a LOT of people all over North America that have problems with wheat.
If they go somewhere like France (where it is Illegal to grow/use GMO wheat) they can eat anything, but the moment they get home, the problems start again.
That's an interesting assertion, can you show any studies done on a statistically significant group of people who cannot consume wheat in the USA but can abroad?
If the wheat is modified to be "resistant to bugs" so that the bugs can no longer eat it, what makes the engineers think it's still food for humans?
Well, the traits that make plants resistant to bugs frequently do not affect humans at all. Look at how voraciously humans consume peppers that are high in capsaicin, for example.
Is it little wonder that so many people are having trouble processing wheat (or other GMO foods)?
Less than 1% of the population has celiac disease, and somewhere around 0.4% actually have a wheat allergy. We could argue about whether that counts as "so many," but I have been unable to find any indication that there's a difference in those numbers based on nationality or whether you're eating GMO wheat or not.
There are so many sources on Youtube alone (yes, I know, that's not the best source, but come on!)
Youtube isn't "not the best source," it's a horrible source. It's filled with crackpot nutjobs who have no evidence and think that owning a camera makes them an expert.
Feel free to Google it for yourselves!
I did and found nothing. Can you provide a source that is actually backed by evidence?
Today's games look nice but play like a 5 year old designed them.
You mean like DOOM? Hollow Knight? NieR: Automata? Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2?
Should I get more esoteric and start listing things like The House in Fata Morgana, Bunny Must Die!, or Guacamelee 1/2?
slow to start ... slow to launch VMs ... slow to shutdown VMs
looks very childish.
In all seriousness, if startup/shutdown performance is so important to you that an extra second is enough to make you roll back versions, why are you using the GUI?
Even if I'm naive, at least I watched the video, which you obviously didn't.
Why would he bother faking it? It's easier to actually have a package stolen than it is to convince somebody to willingly cover their car in glitter.
One could potentially get a 15-day trial of full self-driving for free
One could potentially enable the car's rocket boosters and fly, or maybe print money out of the dashboard!
But for now, let's limit ourselves to things that actually exist.
In other words: the family is almost dead. Is it good or bad? Does not matter. It's inevitable because destruction of the family reflects the current economic basis of society: post-industrial society with consumer economics.
"The family" is very much still alive. The concept you have idealized in your head is simply no longer accepted as the only type of family. Families with divorced parents are not "broken," and you demonizing them does nothing to help.
I, for one, will not mourn the loss of children growing up in households where mommy and daddy are constantly angry and fighting with each other just because it's socially unacceptable for them to go their separate ways.
You would think that somebody with a uid as low as yours would have noticed by now that sometime Slashdot posts articles about non-techy things when they are of significant cultural relevance. "Stuff that matters", as the tagline goes.