And they don't work through straw men to appear unbiased.
Asking Microsoft why they think people should upgrade to Vista is fine, and I hope New York Times will continue to do so. Microsoft is openly and obviously biased with regard to their own products, and getting their side of the story is valuable.
The problem is when you ask some "independent analyst" for their opinion on a possible upgrade, and that analyst happens to be funded by Microsoft.
1) That there have been "hundreds" of substances that cure mice for diabetes, but doesn't work work on humans. Mention 3, and I'll take your word for the remaining 197.
2) That "human metabolism has turned out to be far more complicated than mice". Just a single reference to an article in a peer reviewed scientific publication will do here stating so will do.
Both humans and mice are omnivores and mammals, it would surprise me if the metabolism of the two species was significantly different. But I have been wrong before, it just take more than the word of an anonymous/. user to convince me that I am wrong here.
When I got into computing, Microsoft was mostly known for providing the BASIC interpreter for most of the then-popular "home computers". I started to vaguely dislike them back the because it was always a disappointment when a new home computer came out with MS basic, it was so bland.
The BASIC itself had one interesting feature that made me less than impressed by Bill Gates abilities as a programmer. GOTO was O(n), where n was the number of lines before the one you wanted to go to. It worked by keeping the program as a sorted list of lines, and goto just searched the list from the beginning. Given that GOTO is pretty important in BASIC, that was a awful way to do it. Still better than the TI 99/4A, which kept the lines as an unsorted list, so going to the next line meant searching through the entire program.
Then MS/PC DOS began to gain dominance at the same time I started to play with Unix and Lisa/Mac computers. MS-DOS was so backward, no hardware abstraction at all, not to mention any multi user/process facilities. Some people expected me to be able to help them with their PC problems, because I studied computers as school. And the problems was always stupid hardware questions that any half-decent OS would have shielded the user from. My advice tended to be "get a Mac" (even though I personally preferred Unix it was at the time only for programmers).
It took MS an eternity to come up with a usable graphic abstraction (MS Windows), not to mention OS (NT). I honestly believe that this was Gates greatest crime to humanity, holding back the state of the art for 20 years. The accumulated economic cost of this must have been enormous, if we translate this into human lives he becomes the largest mass-murderer in history. His foundation better find a cure for AIDS for his karma balance to go up.
Although not Microsoft's fault, it does not make me like them better when I hear ordinary people seriously being thankful to Microsoft for inventing all kind of stuff that other people did better before. People seriously believe Microsoft invented the Internet, or made it accessible, even though it was one of the last companies to get into that area. Even Al Gore has a better claim on it, he was preaching the blessing and potentials of the Internet for Congress and any journalist who cared to listen long before Bill Gates discovered that it was something he had to support if he didn't want to become irrelevant.
The Microsoft software nowadays is actually pretty good. Since they *finally* dumped the DOS based line of operating systems with XP, I have no more complaints on that front, and their applications have always been better than their direct competitors. Which lead to my next problem with Microsoft: Their systematic use of illegal business practice. This is not just my opinion, multiple judges in the US and elsewhere have come to that conclusion. In particular, their tying other products with the one line where they have a monopoly. This is how they won the Office market, and in fact how they won every market they have won. This make Microsoft the largest organization whose main business model is based on illegal activities. Whenever we talk about the Columbian drug lords, Chinese triads, or Russian mafia, it is worth remembering that the largest mob boss is sitting in Seattle.
I'm guessing a Christian who does not feel it imperative to impose their beliefs and values (for US "regressive" Christians typically the belief that the King James translation of the Bible is the only true words of God, and a selected subset of old testament values combined with some values from an imaginary 50's America) on other people.
Which of course make it hypocritical to campaign for the ban of a video-game portraying different values. Of course the values of the video game seems to be that it is good to impose your values on other people.
You can be a good journalist and not be objective at all, and be a objective journalist and not be very good.
Objective journalism is just one journalistic genre, and not the most interesting or even informative one. Subjective journalism can be much more interesting and informative, as long as the journalist are honest about it.
The worst journalists are those who pretend to be or believe they are objective, but aren't.
Actually, it is similar to not only free software projects, but businesses in a free market. They each try to optimize their own niche, those who succeeds thrive and the rest die out. It is "How The System Works".
The problem when it happens to divisions inside the same company is that, unlike for free software projects and small companies, there isn't a objective market to determine who is going to flourish and who is going to wither away. Inside the same organization, it becomes a political game of influence and connections. This is much less efficient than a free market, and is in fact similar to a planned economy (which tends to become inefficient once the initial drive dies out.
This is actually also the sound economic reason why large companies tend to outsource as many tasks as possible. By outsourcing it they can create a market of smaller companies trying to serve their needs, and thus regain some of the lost efficiency.
They only host wikis for free if the content of the wiki is also under a free license.
An obvious business plan would be to charge people who want to use the Wikia for hosting non-free content. This has parallels in the free software world, where Troll Tech give away Qt for use by free software, but charge people who want to use Qt for non-free software. Cygnus did the same with Cygwin, and Alladin probably pioneered the business model with GhostScript.
The free wikis will in this scenario work as a combined advertisement and proof-of-concept for the paying customers.
Obviously the license needs to be considered when making purchases. Who has the right to use the software? At home or at work? For what purposes? And are we at the mercy of a single vendor for service and upgrades?
There is nothing "ideological" about preferring a license that gives your organization the freedom to optimize the deployment and maintenance of the software for both current and (unforeseeable) future needs, over a license that put limitations on use and/or the future evolution of the product.
It is simply due diligence on the part of the decision makers.
Guild Wars might make up more than 3% of "the market" had it been included. It is not included in the MMOGChart.COM charts since it is not subscription based, and the developers doesn't categorize it as a MMORPG.
If universal wins, a "get rich fast" scheme would be:
1) Create and sell copyrightable junk on e.g. www.lulu.com for an inflated price. 2) Post it as an Anonymous Coward on/. 3) Sue/. for copyright infrigement for profit!
A win for Universal would mean all user generated content on all sites would have to be pre-approved, which would be economically infeasible for most hobbyist or ad-based sites. Control of the information stream would fall back in the hands of a few large media companies, and most of the democratic potential of the Internet would be lost.
Part of that was a turf war going on, with an economist moving in on the area covered by scientists. It is no surprise that Scientific American and The Economist took opposing sides in that discussion, each defending their own trade.
He never really did, just that the evidence was inconclusive. Now he believe global warming to be real (the evidence has become stronger), Lomborg just claim that adapting to a changing climate makes more economic sense than trying to control the climate.
Comparing the cost of trying to adapt to a changing climate with the cost of trying to prevent climate change is certainly a worthwhile, especially as global warming based on past actions is already inevitable.
Both the number of false negatives, and the numbers of false positives, in minority report were far smaller than in our current system. So putting it up as a dystopia only shows ignorance of how flawed our current system of justice is.
With all taxes the question is not whether it is good or bad. Almost all taxes have a negative influence influence on the economy seen in isolation. On the other hand, almost all government spending has a positive influence on the economy. And obvious and popular combination, spending without taxing, is very positive on the short term, but undermines the entire system on the long term.
The real question for any tax is therefore, are the consequences of the tax worse or better than other taxes. It is quite simple to analyse: Which actions does the tax encourage, and which actions does the tax discourage.
A good frame of reference for other taxes is income tax since it constitute such a large fraction of the whole tax income. So the question becomes: Is the tax better or worse than income tax. Income tax happens to be a particularly harmful tax, it basically punish people for working. It is the last thing any government with an interest in a sound economy should be interesting in discouraging.
A carbon tax takes money out of the economy, which is harmful the way all taxes are. It also discourage the use of fossil foil, which may or may not have some beneficial effect on climate, but certainly lessens the economy's dependence on political stability in the middle eastern region. And it encourage research and development in alternative energy and conservation to happen earlier than a simple supply and demand curve on the fossil fuel reserves (known and hidden) would suggest.
All in all, as taxes go, a carbon tax is far from the worst.
PS: A common argument against any new tax is that it encourage enlarging the budget, which is a very valid point in any country with a tradition for having a balanced budget.
> The state funding drug research itself would also bring with it the not inconsequential benefit > of the ability to concentrate on beneficial drugs, rather than drugs that will make a profit.
In most of the civilized world even the "private" medical research is tax funded, as a large part the medicine is financed over taxes. Cutting out the middle-men would be an obvious way to optimize the system for two reasons: 1) Public researchers have a much larger liberty to (and are strongly encouraged to) publish and share results at a much earlier stage than researchers in private corporations, where the final patent applications is usually the first publication of the research. 2) The current medical research is heavily unbalanced in favor of patentable items, starving out research in new uses for existing (non-patented or patent-expired) compounds for other diceases, as well as the effect of life-style changes and other non-medical treatments.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing that the "private" MMORPG's would be used for:
1) Private chatrooms for a bunch of friends, or an an organization. A school could run its own MMORPG server, so could a LUG.
2) The game master for a bunch of dedicated role-players might want one for a private campaign.
3) Developers might run one to test-drive specific ideas.
And they don't work through straw men to appear unbiased.
Asking Microsoft why they think people should upgrade to Vista is fine, and I hope New York Times will continue to do so. Microsoft is openly and obviously biased with regard to their own products, and getting their side of the story is valuable.
The problem is when you ask some "independent analyst" for their opinion on a possible upgrade, and that analyst happens to be funded by Microsoft.
Bias is not a problem, hidden bias is a problem.
1) That there have been "hundreds" of substances that cure mice for diabetes, but doesn't work work on humans. Mention 3, and I'll take your word for the remaining 197.
/. user to convince me that I am wrong here.
2) That "human metabolism has turned out to be far more complicated than mice". Just a single reference to an article in a peer reviewed scientific publication will do here stating so will do.
Both humans and mice are omnivores and mammals, it would surprise me if the metabolism of the two species was significantly different. But I have been wrong before, it just take more than the word of an anonymous
Marxism shares some attributes with religions, and it is therefore tempting to call Marxism the state religion of "soviet russia".
When I got into computing, Microsoft was mostly known for providing the BASIC interpreter for most of the then-popular "home computers". I started to vaguely dislike them back the because it was always a disappointment when a new home computer came out with MS basic, it was so bland.
The BASIC itself had one interesting feature that made me less than impressed by Bill Gates abilities as a programmer. GOTO was O(n), where n was the number of lines before the one you wanted to go to. It worked by keeping the program as a sorted list of lines, and goto just searched the list from the beginning. Given that GOTO is pretty important in BASIC, that was a awful way to do it. Still better than the TI 99/4A, which kept the lines as an unsorted list, so going to the next line meant searching through the entire program.
Then MS/PC DOS began to gain dominance at the same time I started to play with Unix and Lisa/Mac computers. MS-DOS was so backward, no hardware abstraction at all, not to mention any multi user/process facilities. Some people expected me to be able to help them with their PC problems, because I studied computers as school. And the problems was always stupid hardware questions that any half-decent OS would have shielded the user from. My advice tended to be "get a Mac" (even though I personally preferred Unix it was at the time only for programmers).
It took MS an eternity to come up with a usable graphic abstraction (MS Windows), not to mention OS (NT). I honestly believe that this was Gates greatest crime to humanity, holding back the state of the art for 20 years. The accumulated economic cost of this must have been enormous, if we translate this into human lives he becomes the largest mass-murderer in history. His foundation better find a cure for AIDS for his karma balance to go up.
Although not Microsoft's fault, it does not make me like them better when I hear ordinary people seriously being thankful to Microsoft for inventing all kind of stuff that other people did better before. People seriously believe Microsoft invented the Internet, or made it accessible, even though it was one of the last companies to get into that area. Even Al Gore has a better claim on it, he was preaching the blessing and potentials of the Internet for Congress and any journalist who cared to listen long before Bill Gates discovered that it was something he had to support if he didn't want to become irrelevant.
The Microsoft software nowadays is actually pretty good. Since they *finally* dumped the DOS based line of operating systems with XP, I have no more complaints on that front, and their applications have always been better than their direct competitors. Which lead to my next problem with Microsoft: Their systematic use of illegal business practice. This is not just my opinion, multiple judges in the US and elsewhere have come to that conclusion. In particular, their tying other products with the one line where they have a monopoly. This is how they won the Office market, and in fact how they won every market they have won. This make Microsoft the largest organization whose main business model is based on illegal activities. Whenever we talk about the Columbian drug lords, Chinese triads, or Russian mafia, it is worth remembering that the largest mob boss is sitting in Seattle.
I'm guessing a Christian who does not feel it imperative to impose their beliefs and values (for US "regressive" Christians typically the belief that the King James translation of the Bible is the only true words of God, and a selected subset of old testament values combined with some values from an imaginary 50's America) on other people.
Which of course make it hypocritical to campaign for the ban of a video-game portraying different values. Of course the values of the video game seems to be that it is good to impose your values on other people.
You can be a good journalist and not be objective at all, and be a objective journalist and not be very good.
Objective journalism is just one journalistic genre, and not the most interesting or even informative one. Subjective journalism can be much more interesting and informative, as long as the journalist are honest about it.
The worst journalists are those who pretend to be or believe they are objective, but aren't.
Actually, it is similar to not only free software projects, but businesses in a free market. They each try to optimize their own niche, those who succeeds thrive and the rest die out. It is "How The System Works".
The problem when it happens to divisions inside the same company is that, unlike for free software projects and small companies, there isn't a objective market to determine who is going to flourish and who is going to wither away. Inside the same organization, it becomes a political game of influence and connections. This is much less efficient than a free market, and is in fact similar to a planned economy (which tends to become inefficient once the initial drive dies out.
This is actually also the sound economic reason why large companies tend to outsource as many tasks as possible. By outsourcing it they can create a market of smaller companies trying to serve their needs, and thus regain some of the lost efficiency.
There is a US$40 box to convert the digital signals into analog input to the TV. At least that is how it works here.
They only host wikis for free if the content of the wiki is also under a free license.
An obvious business plan would be to charge people who want to use the Wikia for hosting non-free content. This has parallels in the free software world, where Troll Tech give away Qt for use by free software, but charge people who want to use Qt for non-free software. Cygnus did the same with Cygwin, and Alladin probably pioneered the business model with GhostScript.
The free wikis will in this scenario work as a combined advertisement and proof-of-concept for the paying customers.
> Last time i checked, Europe was not a nation. I suppose the article means the European Union, but
> isn't it better to keep the meanings intact?
Most non-EU nations in Europe tend to follow EU regulation as well. They just don't get a say in it.
> Also, aren't EU bills only a recommendation for the EU states, which have to accept it one by
> one as well?
They have to be implemented in national law, which the EU countries are legally obliged to do.
Obviously the license needs to be considered when making purchases. Who has the right to use the software? At home or at work? For what purposes? And are we at the mercy of a single vendor for service and upgrades?
There is nothing "ideological" about preferring a license that gives your organization the freedom to optimize the deployment and maintenance of the software for both current and (unforeseeable) future needs, over a license that put limitations on use and/or the future evolution of the product.
It is simply due diligence on the part of the decision makers.
Guild Wars might make up more than 3% of "the market" had it been included. It is not included in the MMOGChart.COM charts since it is not subscription based, and the developers doesn't categorize it as a MMORPG.
If universal wins, a "get rich fast" scheme would be:
/. /. for copyright infrigement for profit!
1) Create and sell copyrightable junk on e.g. www.lulu.com for an inflated price.
2) Post it as an Anonymous Coward on
3) Sue
A win for Universal would mean all user generated content on all sites would have to be pre-approved, which would be economically infeasible for most hobbyist or ad-based sites. Control of the information stream would fall back in the hands of a few large media companies, and most of the democratic potential of the Internet would be lost.
Part of that was a turf war going on, with an economist moving in on the area covered by scientists. It is no surprise that Scientific American and The Economist took opposing sides in that discussion, each defending their own trade.
He never really did, just that the evidence was inconclusive. Now he believe global warming to be real (the evidence has become stronger), Lomborg just claim that adapting to a changing climate makes more economic sense than trying to control the climate.
Comparing the cost of trying to adapt to a changing climate with the cost of trying to prevent climate change is certainly a worthwhile, especially as global warming based on past actions is already inevitable.
Also, none of the tests are really meant as a replacement for sound judgment, they are tools to be used in a discussion amongst the editors.
Both the number of false negatives, and the numbers of false positives, in minority report were far smaller than in our current system. So putting it up as a dystopia only shows ignorance of how flawed our current system of justice is.
Yeah, you and me both :-)
> What happened to our discussion on oxymorons?
The oxy's left early.
> what's in it for Valve?
Stockholder value, as an independent Stem would get more customers, increasing the total profit. Not for Valve, but for Valves stockholders.
One of them is a maximum budget deficit of 3%.
With all taxes the question is not whether it is good or bad. Almost all taxes have a negative influence influence on the economy seen in isolation. On the other hand, almost all government spending has a positive influence on the economy. And obvious and popular combination, spending without taxing, is very positive on the short term, but undermines the entire system on the long term.
The real question for any tax is therefore, are the consequences of the tax worse or better than other taxes.
It is quite simple to analyse: Which actions does the tax encourage, and which actions does the tax discourage.
A good frame of reference for other taxes is income tax since it constitute such a large fraction of the whole tax income. So the question becomes: Is the tax better or worse than income tax. Income tax happens to be a particularly harmful tax, it basically punish people for working. It is the last thing any government with an interest in a sound economy should be interesting in discouraging.
A carbon tax takes money out of the economy, which is harmful the way all taxes are. It also discourage the use of fossil foil, which may or may not have some beneficial effect on climate, but certainly lessens the economy's dependence on political stability in the middle eastern region. And it encourage research and development in alternative energy and conservation to happen earlier than a simple supply and demand curve on the fossil fuel reserves (known and hidden) would suggest.
All in all, as taxes go, a carbon tax is far from the worst.
PS: A common argument against any new tax is that it encourage enlarging the budget, which is a very valid point in any country with a tradition for having a balanced budget.
> The state funding drug research itself would also bring with it the not inconsequential benefit
> of the ability to concentrate on beneficial drugs, rather than drugs that will make a profit.
In most of the civilized world even the "private" medical research is tax funded, as a large part the medicine is financed over taxes. Cutting out the middle-men would be an obvious way to optimize the system for two reasons: 1) Public researchers have a much larger liberty to (and are strongly encouraged to) publish and share results at a much earlier stage than researchers in private corporations, where the final patent applications is usually the first publication of the research. 2) The current medical research is heavily unbalanced in favor of patentable items, starving out research in new uses for existing (non-patented or patent-expired) compounds for other diceases, as well as the effect of life-style changes and other non-medical treatments.
It seems to pass the first test of good satire, it is close enough that some people mistake it for reality. Obvious satire is pointless and boring.