WTF are you on about?
The journalist consulted opposing views from:
1) Robert Park, professor of physics at the University of Maryland
2) William Beattie, senior lecturer in electrical engineering at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland
Did you notice the article appearing in the "Lifestyle" section, rather than science? Did you notice that the article made extensive use of words like "skeptics" and "undaunted" and referred to the cold fusion debacle? Did you notice that it always referred to the claim in the conditional, as in its last line: "If the Jasker men really are onto something, it could be the most important Irish invention since Guinness"?
Did you even read the article?
The criticism of Reuters by michael is entirely unjustified here. He asks us to keep an eye out for retractions. What is Reuters going to retract? They accurately reported what had happened: some people have made an improbable claim that, *if true and that is unlikely*, could be revolutionary. Reuters consulted some experts who confirmed that it was unlikely; the journo reported seeing a demonstration that apparently supported the claims, but did not claim that the case was proven; the article discussed the context of claims about energy generation, noting that some contributors were serious and others were not. There is nothing to retract.
You don't seem to realise that you are arguing against yourself. Risk is indeed a natural part of the market, and hence there is a risk not only to companies but to the economy. Among the various risks in a market are the risk that a company will behave badly and not suffer the consequences -- so it will indeed get away with things forever. There's no point in arguing with me about this until you find an economist who doesn't believe in market failure due to externalities. Good luck trying. The other classic market failure, by the way, is the provision of public goods. For more, you could start here:
http://www.jondot.com/Economics/BBEconomicsdef3. ht ml
or here:
http://www.bized.ac.uk/cgi-bin/glossarydb/browse .p l?glostopic=1&glosid=703
Enjoy your education.
Externalities, for one thing. That is, costs not directly born by the customers of the company. These costs (technically) distort the market and can result in the costs to the economy being greater than the net gain. Examples would include airplane fuel, much food production, and currency speculation (cost the UK >£10bn in the ERM debacle).
Another factor: opportunity cost. For example, it is expensive for a national economy to spend c15% of GDP on health care (as the US does) when other countries spend 10% (as EU countries do) for roughly comparable results (defined in terms of health outcomes for the population as a whole). Treat the economy as a whole like a company and health costs are an overhead (just as they are for individual companies). Best to try to minimise them so you can spend your money more productively.
Additionally, you appear to ignore market failure: while it *should* be true that company A that treats its workers better will attract more companies than slave-driving company B, it isn't always the case, even over the long term. Monopsony (employer monopoly) is just one reason why.
Economics is partly modelled on the theory of natural selection. But what free marketeers often forget is that natural selection describes a statistical process -- in other words, it *expects* to find results that don't "make sense" (the gazelle escaping the tiger) -- shit happens. Same is true for economics -- sometimes companies just get away with things, up to and including murder, without paying a price for their behaviour.
While it's true that the market isn't perfect, only the market fundies pretend it is. Real-world economists are interested in real-world, imperfect markets. Power doesn't always work in favour of employers, although it usually does for low-pay jobs.
"In fact the total benefit to the economy (of wich we are all a part) is much greater when a business maximizes its profits."
That is not necessarily true. You won't find an economist anywhere who would agree. It doesn't take into account either externalities or monopolies and other forms of market failure. We all realise that in general terms, a company making $2bn a year of profits is better than one making only $1bn a year, but the rest of us have grasped the fact that other factors are also important.
The problem isn't companies having a primary focus on profits. It's that they frequently focus only on profits. And, in the case of their employees in particular, there are enough poor desparate sods in the world that any miserable job you care to name, from shit-shoveller to fluffer to call-centre employee to child soldier can be filled. (Filling other types of jobs is frequently harder--beggars and choosers and all that.) So, companies are frequently regulated to ensure that the profit motive does not result in employees being killed, physically injured, defrauded of their rightful due, etc etc. Even with regulation, plenty of this sort of stuff still happens. Eventually, if enough bad stuff happens, it might possibly damage a company's brand image and then lead to failure. But the links are tenuous and its a rare event. So regulation, with all its attendant problems, remains a better route.
You're generalising way too much. There is no direct correlation between the level of capitalism in a country and its unemployment levels. It might feel that way to you, but it doesn't accord with the facts, especially if you look back historically.
Is Bin Laden someone "with nothing"? Or is he, in fact, the wealthy scion of a Saudi family worth several hundred million and funded to the tune of the same by a range of like-minded bigots and terrorists?
Do you even know what genocide is? There is no systematic attempt to *wipe out the Palestinian people* by Israelis. There are more Palestinians alive today than at any time in history. If you want to understand genocide, mr anonymous coward, go read "The Last of the Just" by Andre Schwarz Bart. You might, if you have the wit to understand the words, learn what real horror is.
How come you mention US atrocities and Israeli atrocities but have not a single word to say about atrocities in Algeria, Morocco and Jordan, to name but three countries? If you're going to blether about police states in the Middle East and repression, how about a word or two from you about Syria, Iraq and Iran? Which Middle Eastern country besides Israel has a democracy in which parties actually leave power and are replaced by other parties? How about a discussion of racist laws in the UAE? How about a discussion of the oppression of Afghan women? Why are you so keen to give Israel and the US a hard time when there are so *many* tremendous wrongs being committed by all these *other* governments in the Middle East? How about a discussion of funding of the PA by Arab states vis a vis funding of Hamas and Hizbollah (hint: lots of cash went to the latter, destabilising the former)? How about the fact that you will find the most horrendous antisemitic descriptions in Arab media across the Middle East, caricaturing Jews in exactly the same terms as used by the Nazis (indeed, often lifting material from Nazi-supported publications such as Der Sturmer)? Did you know that during Ramadan last year, Arab TV stations across the region screened a 30-part series entitled "Horseman without a Horse", based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Can you even begin to imagine the response were an Israeli TV station to broadcast something remotely as offensive?
Your belief in the viciousness of Israel and the US as compared with the purity of its victims is not supported by the evidence. Next time you want to help some victims of an occupation out, surprise yourself and go to the Western Sahara.
While you're there, you'll be able to find:
-- a victimised people living in refugee camps in other countries (the Sahrawis in Algeria)
-- a state violating UN resolutions ('75 as opposed to '67, I grant you)
-- extensive US support for that state including military aid and grants
-- a post-colonial history that partly created the mess in the first place (Spain rather than Britain in this case)
-- and a world that cares a hell of a lot less about what happens there than it does about what happens in Israel. So put *that* in your pipe and smoke it.
While all of those are neat and exciting toys, they're none of them nearly so important as food and water. Carrying food and water has been the bugbear of infantry for thousands of years, and it's not resolved yet. Powered exoskeletons potentially allow infantry to operate for longer away from base by enabling them to carry more food and drink.
If you don't like the BMW analogy, how about GSK instead? GlaxoSmithKline, the world's largest drug company, has a market share of about 10%, and had sales of £18bn in 2000, 9% up on the previous year. Pfizer was equally impressive. Merck wasn't too shabby either. Market share is not the be all and end all in determining business success.
Most of the examples of vertical market apps you quote aren't really apps at all. They're databases. And buying preformatted databases can sometimes be a good idea -- but Filemaker Pro means that you can get your IT guy to build one for you in, oh about 2 hours max. And of course, there are lots of Filemaker templates available as well. And lots of specialist apps that only run on Macs (the legal and medical fields are particularly rich in these).
Who's liable? In all likelihood, the gov't. Rules for gov't are different from rules for commercial vendors. (And anyway, either the pedestrian or their relative will be paying taxes, so there is a consideration.)
Are you deliberately trying to miss the point? The "few things" that the iPod gets right are precisely what's worth making a fuss about--because they are technologically challenging to achieve. It is an example of a machine that meets the needs, and exceeds the expectations, of its key user market. That user market wants something:
1) that is simple to use (interface, hotsync, size, weight)
2) that is painless to keep up to date (itunes, firewire)
3) that provides more music and more juice than they will require at any one time (hard disk, battery power)
4) that looks desirable (industrial design)
the iPod meets all of these needs, and does so elegantly. archos is much more hit and miss:
1) it is not so simple to use
2) it is more painful to keep up to date
3) it provides more than enough music and juice
4) it looks childish, not desirable.
the reason that so many people are interested in iPod is because they recognise it as a really superb piece of design. it takes skull-sweat and genius to make something be that simple and easy to use. that's what's revolutionary.
apple was never, primarily, about doing things that have never been done before. it was and is about doing things properly, for the first time ever. a genius for commercialisation.
Here are four of the reasons:
1) Archos is somewhat bigger (in each of H, W and D)
2) Archos has slower transfer rates (USB 2 vs Firewire)
3) Archos is a lot lot uglier.
4) Archos weighs a lot lot more (350g vs 185g)
There are many more, but that's enough to be going on with.
Your theory is oh-so-seductive. Shame it's absolute horse-hooey. If a company executive signs a contract on behalf of their company for, say, buying a supply of electricity for the next ten years, the contract doesn't become void if that executive leaves. The burden of paying for the electricity still falls on the investors, employees and hence must be passed on to customers. If it was a wrong decision, and the company's paying too much, well, it'll have to try to make more money. If it doesn't succeed, it'll go under. If the shareholders have bet their shirts on the company, the more fool them. There's no difference here with criminal acts. Canny investors look at a company in-the-round, assessing all risks to their money. Only prats who think they're owed a living don't look at potential criminal liabilities. Same goes for employees. As for customers...if the price goes to high, they'll simply shop elsewhere. That's the beauty of the market. You sound like a rightwinger's caricature of an anti-capitalist and a leftist, wanting to protect businesses from failure and individuals from the consequences of their decision-making--and wanting the taxpayer to pick up the tab.
I was, on the whole, disappointed. I wasn't fussed about most of the plot changes, whether major (Bombadil) or minor (Frodo opening the doors of Moria), especially where there was a sensible reason (e.g. Frodo's opening the doors showed the hobbits' love of riddles). I was fussed when the change seemed pointless (why not have the monster slam the doors shut and pile rocks and trees on it, as in the book?). And I was very fussed when the changes trivialised the book; having the council degenerate into a near fist-fight was childish, overblowing the antipathy of dwarves and elves and ensuring that no discussion took place of the three options for the ring (destroy it, use it or lose it); having Bilbo seem ferocious and vicious when asking for a final viewing of the ring was an inaccurate portrayal of its power; and having Frodo deteriorate immediately he is wounded at Weathertop actually serves to trivialise the power of the wound, by losing its insidious nature.
But my greatest beefs were with characterisation and dialogue. Both of these were, from time to time, shamefully trivialised. The hobbits appeared to be no more than children; in the book, it is clear that although merry, they are in no way child-like. Saruman was portrayed not as someone who has lost his wisdom through his own arrogance in using the Palantir, but as someone who is and always was evil, notwithstanding references by Gandalf to the contrary.
The dialogue issues were even worse. I was worried that the occassionally portentous speech of Tolkein's characters would jar when portrayed on screen. It never did. But the new dialogue frequently trivialised the characters. The most unforgivable line was Aragorn's comment about "let's hunt us some Orc" at the end. A close second were the endless comments from Frodo about how dreadful it being away from home was. It's not that he doesn't state in the books that he's unhappy to be away; he does. But he doesn't whine, and he doesn't keep restating it. He is stoic. Stoicism is at the centre of his character.
A final complaint: CGI was pretty good; many sets were really good. But I felt that Moria was nowhere near as awful (in the full sense of the word) as the book; and Lothlorien and Rivendell did not feel ethereally beautiful, they felt plasticised.
All in all, the film was not what I'd hoped for.
Re:People count by tens... eurr....
on
Ternary Computing
·
· Score: 1
Interesting you should mention non-metric systems. The reason for them is simple: 12 and 16 divide better than 10 if you're interested in integers (which shopkeepers are). 12 can be divided smoothly by 6, 4, 3, 2; 16 by 8, 4, 2. 10, by contrast, divides smoothly only by 5 and 2. There are some other advantages as well, but I can't remember them.
How can the software determine the quality of a communication? It *appears* to be a purely quantitative measure of the amount of communication that occurs. Way too crude to be of any use--a large organisation would be much better off getting a decent soft-skills trainer to observe and then run a program for a month or two.
Hebrew and Arabic do have vowels; however, vowels are not used in most adult publications because the meaning (and sound) of words can be picked up from the context. This is a bugger when learning these languages as an adult (hayeled hazeh hoo ani)
Which is why every week, we hear of yet another incident of gun-related madness in English churches. Just last Sunday, as was reported all around the world, gun-toting robbers broke into six churches, shot no fewer than three thousand congregants, and stole more than eighty million quid. The UK--a country where you'll *never* feel safe from gun-wielding maniacs in a church.
I hate to have to say this, but seeing as it's Slashdot, I must: that was sarcasm. I haven't seen the official statistics, but I'd be willing to bet that no-one got shot in a British church in the last year.
Sorry to state the obvious here, but the reason why the supply of doctors is limited, and why there are such things as "qualifications" is because YOUR LIFE IS IN THEIR HANDS. you might dismiss this now, but i'll bet that if you ever need a CVS or some other technical procedure you'll want as qualified a person as possible carrying it out.
You ask an interesting question: why nationalise anything? Here are some answers:
a) for certain industries, it can be more efficient. For instance, the UK gets its healthcare for 6-7% of GDP, while it costs more than 15% in the US. The UK achieves 99%+ coverage, the US c85%.
b) there's no point in privatising an industry where efficiency gains from competition can't be realised. Good examples are natural monopolies such as rail transport. The UK experience in rail privatisation is a chastening reminder of the bankruptcy of ideologically-driven privatisation.
c) economic concerns may not be paramount. It may be more important to retain public control and accountability over, e.g., power supply, the police or air traffic control than to run these services on a profit-driven basis.
There are, of course, many more reasons, but there is also this challenge for everyone in favour of getting the gummint off your backs: you've shown you can be clear-sighted about government abuses. Will you do the same for private, corporate abuse?
In the UK, it's common in student elections, where it's called RON -- ReOpen Nominations. It's not nearly as good a solution as reforming the voting system thoroughly, though. AV, AV+, PV, Borda, the choices are legion. Each has it's advantages and disadvantages, but most are better than current systems (both US and UK).
That might be because the Independent Council law was deisgned to deal with things like rigging the votes of the most important election in the world and not presidential blowjobs.
Slashdot Mirror
WTF are you on about?
The journalist consulted opposing views from:
1) Robert Park, professor of physics at the University of Maryland
2) William Beattie, senior lecturer in electrical engineering at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland
Did you notice the article appearing in the "Lifestyle" section, rather than science? Did you notice that the article made extensive use of words like "skeptics" and "undaunted" and referred to the cold fusion debacle? Did you notice that it always referred to the claim in the conditional, as in its last line: "If the Jasker men really are onto something, it could be the most important Irish invention since Guinness"?
Did you even read the article?
The criticism of Reuters by michael is entirely unjustified here. He asks us to keep an eye out for retractions. What is Reuters going to retract? They accurately reported what had happened: some people have made an improbable claim that, *if true and that is unlikely*, could be revolutionary. Reuters consulted some experts who confirmed that it was unlikely; the journo reported seeing a demonstration that apparently supported the claims, but did not claim that the case was proven; the article discussed the context of claims about energy generation, noting that some contributors were serious and others were not. There is nothing to retract.
You don't seem to realise that you are arguing against yourself. Risk is indeed a natural part of the market, and hence there is a risk not only to companies but to the economy. Among the various risks in a market are the risk that a company will behave badly and not suffer the consequences -- so it will indeed get away with things forever. There's no point in arguing with me about this until you find an economist who doesn't believe in market failure due to externalities. Good luck trying. The other classic market failure, by the way, is the provision of public goods. For more, you could start here:. ht ml
e .p l?glostopic=1&glosid=703
http://www.jondot.com/Economics/BBEconomicsdef3
or here:
http://www.bized.ac.uk/cgi-bin/glossarydb/brows
Enjoy your education.
Externalities, for one thing. That is, costs not directly born by the customers of the company. These costs (technically) distort the market and can result in the costs to the economy being greater than the net gain. Examples would include airplane fuel, much food production, and currency speculation (cost the UK >£10bn in the ERM debacle).
Another factor: opportunity cost. For example, it is expensive for a national economy to spend c15% of GDP on health care (as the US does) when other countries spend 10% (as EU countries do) for roughly comparable results (defined in terms of health outcomes for the population as a whole). Treat the economy as a whole like a company and health costs are an overhead (just as they are for individual companies). Best to try to minimise them so you can spend your money more productively.
Additionally, you appear to ignore market failure: while it *should* be true that company A that treats its workers better will attract more companies than slave-driving company B, it isn't always the case, even over the long term. Monopsony (employer monopoly) is just one reason why.
Economics is partly modelled on the theory of natural selection. But what free marketeers often forget is that natural selection describes a statistical process -- in other words, it *expects* to find results that don't "make sense" (the gazelle escaping the tiger) -- shit happens. Same is true for economics -- sometimes companies just get away with things, up to and including murder, without paying a price for their behaviour.
While it's true that the market isn't perfect, only the market fundies pretend it is. Real-world economists are interested in real-world, imperfect markets. Power doesn't always work in favour of employers, although it usually does for low-pay jobs.
"In fact the total benefit to the economy (of wich we are all a part) is much greater when a business maximizes its profits."
That is not necessarily true. You won't find an economist anywhere who would agree. It doesn't take into account either externalities or monopolies and other forms of market failure. We all realise that in general terms, a company making $2bn a year of profits is better than one making only $1bn a year, but the rest of us have grasped the fact that other factors are also important.
The problem isn't companies having a primary focus on profits. It's that they frequently focus only on profits. And, in the case of their employees in particular, there are enough poor desparate sods in the world that any miserable job you care to name, from shit-shoveller to fluffer to call-centre employee to child soldier can be filled. (Filling other types of jobs is frequently harder--beggars and choosers and all that.) So, companies are frequently regulated to ensure that the profit motive does not result in employees being killed, physically injured, defrauded of their rightful due, etc etc. Even with regulation, plenty of this sort of stuff still happens. Eventually, if enough bad stuff happens, it might possibly damage a company's brand image and then lead to failure. But the links are tenuous and its a rare event. So regulation, with all its attendant problems, remains a better route.
You're generalising way too much. There is no direct correlation between the level of capitalism in a country and its unemployment levels. It might feel that way to you, but it doesn't accord with the facts, especially if you look back historically.
The Nazis didn't fight back? The original modern special forces were the SAS, formed in WWII. The SAS is generally considered to be a success...
Do you even know what genocide is? There is no systematic attempt to *wipe out the Palestinian people* by Israelis. There are more Palestinians alive today than at any time in history. If you want to understand genocide, mr anonymous coward, go read "The Last of the Just" by Andre Schwarz Bart. You might, if you have the wit to understand the words, learn what real horror is.
How come you mention US atrocities and Israeli atrocities but have not a single word to say about atrocities in Algeria, Morocco and Jordan, to name but three countries? If you're going to blether about police states in the Middle East and repression, how about a word or two from you about Syria, Iraq and Iran? Which Middle Eastern country besides Israel has a democracy in which parties actually leave power and are replaced by other parties? How about a discussion of racist laws in the UAE? How about a discussion of the oppression of Afghan women? Why are you so keen to give Israel and the US a hard time when there are so *many* tremendous wrongs being committed by all these *other* governments in the Middle East? How about a discussion of funding of the PA by Arab states vis a vis funding of Hamas and Hizbollah (hint: lots of cash went to the latter, destabilising the former)? How about the fact that you will find the most horrendous antisemitic descriptions in Arab media across the Middle East, caricaturing Jews in exactly the same terms as used by the Nazis (indeed, often lifting material from Nazi-supported publications such as Der Sturmer)? Did you know that during Ramadan last year, Arab TV stations across the region screened a 30-part series entitled "Horseman without a Horse", based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Can you even begin to imagine the response were an Israeli TV station to broadcast something remotely as offensive?
Your belief in the viciousness of Israel and the US as compared with the purity of its victims is not supported by the evidence. Next time you want to help some victims of an occupation out, surprise yourself and go to the Western Sahara. While you're there, you'll be able to find:
-- a victimised people living in refugee camps in other countries (the Sahrawis in Algeria)
-- a state violating UN resolutions ('75 as opposed to '67, I grant you)
-- extensive US support for that state including military aid and grants
-- a post-colonial history that partly created the mess in the first place (Spain rather than Britain in this case)
-- and a world that cares a hell of a lot less about what happens there than it does about what happens in Israel. So put *that* in your pipe and smoke it.
While all of those are neat and exciting toys, they're none of them nearly so important as food and water. Carrying food and water has been the bugbear of infantry for thousands of years, and it's not resolved yet. Powered exoskeletons potentially allow infantry to operate for longer away from base by enabling them to carry more food and drink.
If you don't like the BMW analogy, how about GSK instead? GlaxoSmithKline, the world's largest drug company, has a market share of about 10%, and had sales of £18bn in 2000, 9% up on the previous year. Pfizer was equally impressive. Merck wasn't too shabby either. Market share is not the be all and end all in determining business success.
Most of the examples of vertical market apps you quote aren't really apps at all. They're databases. And buying preformatted databases can sometimes be a good idea -- but Filemaker Pro means that you can get your IT guy to build one for you in, oh about 2 hours max. And of course, there are lots of Filemaker templates available as well. And lots of specialist apps that only run on Macs (the legal and medical fields are particularly rich in these).
Who's liable? In all likelihood, the gov't. Rules for gov't are different from rules for commercial vendors. (And anyway, either the pedestrian or their relative will be paying taxes, so there is a consideration.)
Are you deliberately trying to miss the point? The "few things" that the iPod gets right are precisely what's worth making a fuss about--because they are technologically challenging to achieve. It is an example of a machine that meets the needs, and exceeds the expectations, of its key user market. That user market wants something:
1) that is simple to use (interface, hotsync, size, weight)
2) that is painless to keep up to date (itunes, firewire)
3) that provides more music and more juice than they will require at any one time (hard disk, battery power)
4) that looks desirable (industrial design)
the iPod meets all of these needs, and does so elegantly. archos is much more hit and miss:
1) it is not so simple to use
2) it is more painful to keep up to date
3) it provides more than enough music and juice
4) it looks childish, not desirable.
the reason that so many people are interested in iPod is because they recognise it as a really superb piece of design. it takes skull-sweat and genius to make something be that simple and easy to use. that's what's revolutionary.
apple was never, primarily, about doing things that have never been done before. it was and is about doing things properly, for the first time ever. a genius for commercialisation.
Here are four of the reasons:
1) Archos is somewhat bigger (in each of H, W and D)
2) Archos has slower transfer rates (USB 2 vs Firewire)
3) Archos is a lot lot uglier.
4) Archos weighs a lot lot more (350g vs 185g)
There are many more, but that's enough to be going on with.
Your theory is oh-so-seductive. Shame it's absolute horse-hooey. If a company executive signs a contract on behalf of their company for, say, buying a supply of electricity for the next ten years, the contract doesn't become void if that executive leaves. The burden of paying for the electricity still falls on the investors, employees and hence must be passed on to customers. If it was a wrong decision, and the company's paying too much, well, it'll have to try to make more money. If it doesn't succeed, it'll go under. If the shareholders have bet their shirts on the company, the more fool them. There's no difference here with criminal acts. Canny investors look at a company in-the-round, assessing all risks to their money. Only prats who think they're owed a living don't look at potential criminal liabilities. Same goes for employees. As for customers...if the price goes to high, they'll simply shop elsewhere. That's the beauty of the market. You sound like a rightwinger's caricature of an anti-capitalist and a leftist, wanting to protect businesses from failure and individuals from the consequences of their decision-making--and wanting the taxpayer to pick up the tab.
I was, on the whole, disappointed. I wasn't fussed about most of the plot changes, whether major (Bombadil) or minor (Frodo opening the doors of Moria), especially where there was a sensible reason (e.g. Frodo's opening the doors showed the hobbits' love of riddles). I was fussed when the change seemed pointless (why not have the monster slam the doors shut and pile rocks and trees on it, as in the book?). And I was very fussed when the changes trivialised the book; having the council degenerate into a near fist-fight was childish, overblowing the antipathy of dwarves and elves and ensuring that no discussion took place of the three options for the ring (destroy it, use it or lose it); having Bilbo seem ferocious and vicious when asking for a final viewing of the ring was an inaccurate portrayal of its power; and having Frodo deteriorate immediately he is wounded at Weathertop actually serves to trivialise the power of the wound, by losing its insidious nature.
But my greatest beefs were with characterisation and dialogue. Both of these were, from time to time, shamefully trivialised. The hobbits appeared to be no more than children; in the book, it is clear that although merry, they are in no way child-like. Saruman was portrayed not as someone who has lost his wisdom through his own arrogance in using the Palantir, but as someone who is and always was evil, notwithstanding references by Gandalf to the contrary.
The dialogue issues were even worse. I was worried that the occassionally portentous speech of Tolkein's characters would jar when portrayed on screen. It never did. But the new dialogue frequently trivialised the characters. The most unforgivable line was Aragorn's comment about "let's hunt us some Orc" at the end. A close second were the endless comments from Frodo about how dreadful it being away from home was. It's not that he doesn't state in the books that he's unhappy to be away; he does. But he doesn't whine, and he doesn't keep restating it. He is stoic. Stoicism is at the centre of his character.
A final complaint: CGI was pretty good; many sets were really good. But I felt that Moria was nowhere near as awful (in the full sense of the word) as the book; and Lothlorien and Rivendell did not feel ethereally beautiful, they felt plasticised.
All in all, the film was not what I'd hoped for.
Interesting you should mention non-metric systems. The reason for them is simple: 12 and 16 divide better than 10 if you're interested in integers (which shopkeepers are). 12 can be divided smoothly by 6, 4, 3, 2; 16 by 8, 4, 2. 10, by contrast, divides smoothly only by 5 and 2. There are some other advantages as well, but I can't remember them.
How can the software determine the quality of a communication? It *appears* to be a purely quantitative measure of the amount of communication that occurs. Way too crude to be of any use--a large organisation would be much better off getting a decent soft-skills trainer to observe and then run a program for a month or two.
Hebrew and Arabic do have vowels; however, vowels are not used in most adult publications because the meaning (and sound) of words can be picked up from the context. This is a bugger when learning these languages as an adult (hayeled hazeh hoo ani)
Which is why every week, we hear of yet another incident of gun-related madness in English churches. Just last Sunday, as was reported all around the world, gun-toting robbers broke into six churches, shot no fewer than three thousand congregants, and stole more than eighty million quid. The UK--a country where you'll *never* feel safe from gun-wielding maniacs in a church.
I hate to have to say this, but seeing as it's Slashdot, I must: that was sarcasm. I haven't seen the official statistics, but I'd be willing to bet that no-one got shot in a British church in the last year.
Sorry to state the obvious here, but the reason why the supply of doctors is limited, and why there are such things as "qualifications" is because YOUR LIFE IS IN THEIR HANDS. you might dismiss this now, but i'll bet that if you ever need a CVS or some other technical procedure you'll want as qualified a person as possible carrying it out.
You ask an interesting question: why nationalise anything? Here are some answers:
a) for certain industries, it can be more efficient. For instance, the UK gets its healthcare for 6-7% of GDP, while it costs more than 15% in the US. The UK achieves 99%+ coverage, the US c85%.
b) there's no point in privatising an industry where efficiency gains from competition can't be realised. Good examples are natural monopolies such as rail transport. The UK experience in rail privatisation is a chastening reminder of the bankruptcy of ideologically-driven privatisation.
c) economic concerns may not be paramount. It may be more important to retain public control and accountability over, e.g., power supply, the police or air traffic control than to run these services on a profit-driven basis.
There are, of course, many more reasons, but there is also this challenge for everyone in favour of getting the gummint off your backs: you've shown you can be clear-sighted about government abuses. Will you do the same for private, corporate abuse?
In the UK, it's common in student elections, where it's called RON -- ReOpen Nominations. It's not nearly as good a solution as reforming the voting system thoroughly, though. AV, AV+, PV, Borda, the choices are legion. Each has it's advantages and disadvantages, but most are better than current systems (both US and UK).
That might be because the Independent Council law was deisgned to deal with things like rigging the votes of the most important election in the world and not presidential blowjobs.