You've made an assertion, but you need evidence to stack it up. You could equally well assert that preventing access will indeed protect Australian families, because people's paedophilic urges are stoked, not released, by viewing the material. More fundamentally, for child porn to be made, children have to be sexually abused.
I love your 3. I love the idea of blaming *union* bosses for jobs going overseas, rather than, say *company* bosses. As for living in luxury....I wish I had the figures to hand, but I'm pretty sure you'd find that the average US employee made something like $20 or $30k last year, the average union boss made maybe $200k, and the average S&P company boss made $20*million*.
"Hot" and "scalding" are not synonymous. The coffee at that time used to be served literally undrinkably hot, ie you would have burned yourself getting it in your mouth.
Oh yes, every American company would be doing much better if it only had engineers and designers at its helm. Of course. Because engineers and designers, in addition to knowing about engineering and design, are automagically gifted with all the other competencies required to lead an S&P 500, like strategy, finance, pricing, HR etc. Those are all easy and can be learned on the job by any fool, whereas engineering and design are uniquely difficult and challenging.
And as for marketing -- you're absolutely right, marketing is all about convincing consumers to accept shitty experiences, and nothing to do with investing in learning about what their customers want and then seeking to deliver against that desire.
I'm glad to see that no-one's interested in making hackneyed and ridiculously simplistic complaints about modern business on Slashdot today!
I'll concede you have a point to make when you can show me the figures demonstrating that an appreciable percentage of a typical US corporation's income is spent on legal stuff. I suspect the in fact the spend may be a few tens of millions per year -- ie a pimple on the arse of a behemoth like Apple.
Are you deliberately being ironic in quoting Heinlein to support a contention that laissez-faire is the right approach to labour regulation? Really? Did you not read Citizen of the Galaxy? Red Planet? The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? Logic of Empire? Sheesh...
No, public transportation in large parts of the US sucks. Here in England, even given the disgustingly expensive costs of tickets on much of the rail network and the lack of a high-speed network, train travel is a substantially nicer experience than car travel. London to Cambridge. Manchester to Leeds. London to Manchester. Leeds to Edinburgh. All of these journeys and many more are faster, more reliable, more comfortable, more fun and set you up better to work when done by train vs done by car. Not to mention the joys of train travel vs the hideousness of car travel when you have kids.
Btw, re buses. In London, the bus network is regulated vs the rest of the UK where it's not. Consequently, buses are more highly used, more reliable, more frequent, and used by a wider cross-section of society than in the rest of the UK.
Liquids were first restricted by the Brits, not the Americans. But there's no such restrictions on Eurostar, the most security-obsessed rail line in the UK, nor on other UK rail services. Trains are different. They are much more "mass" and much more last-minute than planes, and as such, people simply aren't prepared to put up with the same level of restrictions. The police have wittered on about introducing bomb detector arches permanently at Waterloo, for example, and have been met by howls of derision.
It's not just about intellectual validity, as you rightly say, but psychology doesn't all work in the direction of greater security.
I'm sorry, what? US health care was working well except for the tax and regulations? Well, you certainly seem to be enjoying the drugs they're giving you. Out in the real world, where people care about things like output per unit of input, otherwise known as productivity, US healthcare costs a bomb for some pretty shitty results. If you want to talk about a successful health system, quote Singapore, as people who actually know something about this field do.
Y'know, I'm always just a teensy bit sceptical of authors whose nominally empirical investigations into multiple different topics, across which they cannot hope to have expertise, just so happens to reach a set of conclusions that uniformly support one world-view -- in this case, that anything other than the untrammelled market is Very Bad.
Well, David Hockney is a pretty significant artist. And he describes his iPad as "a wonderful new drawing medium" albeit he is "at a loss as to how to make it pay"
He never said they catered for hardcore techheads well. But they certainly appear to aim their benefits descriptions at techheads rather than more mainstream consumers.
I get your point on the first item, although I think Iran is quite a bit closer to being a dictatorship now than it was pre-election.
On the second point, the aim of the Israeli deterrent is presumably to reduce the chance of a large-scale existential attack on population centres via eg chemical weapons or (in extremis) a successful invasion.
Yes, I'm serious. Israel's not really interested in starting a nuclear war of aggression, Iran is. Botched raids on flotillas have got sod all to do with anything
Are you serious? You're cross about mislabelling of pipebombs but don't have anything to say about illegal wars and big lies about WMDs existing that didn't?
I described Iran as a messianic theocracy because its messianism and its theocratic nature is *precisely* what makes it more probable that they will use a nuke (which is something above and beyond simply committing mass murder, because the fall-out is that much worse, in every sense). Because they're messianic, they may seek to bring on the next stage of redemption (as they see it) through a cataclysm.
Israel has religious messianic zealots too, who are forever trying to access Temple Mount etc etc, but they are a long way away from having any political power (although it has plenty of religious non-messianic zealots who have lots of power).
Well now....the reason that people are relatively relaxed about Israel having 200 nukes and yet freaked out by the Iranians having just one is because Iran is run by a messianic fascist theocracy which really couldn't give a shit about killing several million people while Israel is a semi-secular rightwing democracy dedicated to keeping a few million people alive. So the cases aren't exactly parallel.
Cue Basil Fawlty-esque voice from that classic episode: "Ohhhhhhhh, it's Obama's fault is it. Here's me thinking it might be Bush's fault for starting an illegal war, or Cheney's fault for encouraging lying about the presence of WMD, or Powell's fault for playing the willing patsy at the UN, but nooooo, it's Obama's because he's Muslim and black and won the election when I wanted the Republicans to be in power for longer. Well, he'll have to be punished then: who's a naughty boy, Barack"
Slashdot Mirror
I meant real child porn, not what weirdo US legislators define as child porn.
You've made an assertion, but you need evidence to stack it up. You could equally well assert that preventing access will indeed protect Australian families, because people's paedophilic urges are stoked, not released, by viewing the material. More fundamentally, for child porn to be made, children have to be sexually abused.
I love your 3. I love the idea of blaming *union* bosses for jobs going overseas, rather than, say *company* bosses. As for living in luxury....I wish I had the figures to hand, but I'm pretty sure you'd find that the average US employee made something like $20 or $30k last year, the average union boss made maybe $200k, and the average S&P company boss made $20*million*.
"Hot" and "scalding" are not synonymous. The coffee at that time used to be served literally undrinkably hot, ie you would have burned yourself getting it in your mouth.
Oh yes, every American company would be doing much better if it only had engineers and designers at its helm. Of course. Because engineers and designers, in addition to knowing about engineering and design, are automagically gifted with all the other competencies required to lead an S&P 500, like strategy, finance, pricing, HR etc. Those are all easy and can be learned on the job by any fool, whereas engineering and design are uniquely difficult and challenging.
And as for marketing -- you're absolutely right, marketing is all about convincing consumers to accept shitty experiences, and nothing to do with investing in learning about what their customers want and then seeking to deliver against that desire.
I'm glad to see that no-one's interested in making hackneyed and ridiculously simplistic complaints about modern business on Slashdot today!
I'll concede you have a point to make when you can show me the figures demonstrating that an appreciable percentage of a typical US corporation's income is spent on legal stuff. I suspect the in fact the spend may be a few tens of millions per year -- ie a pimple on the arse of a behemoth like Apple.
Are you deliberately being ironic in quoting Heinlein to support a contention that laissez-faire is the right approach to labour regulation? Really? Did you not read Citizen of the Galaxy? Red Planet? The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? Logic of Empire? Sheesh...
No, public transportation in large parts of the US sucks. Here in England, even given the disgustingly expensive costs of tickets on much of the rail network and the lack of a high-speed network, train travel is a substantially nicer experience than car travel. London to Cambridge. Manchester to Leeds. London to Manchester. Leeds to Edinburgh. All of these journeys and many more are faster, more reliable, more comfortable, more fun and set you up better to work when done by train vs done by car. Not to mention the joys of train travel vs the hideousness of car travel when you have kids.
Btw, re buses. In London, the bus network is regulated vs the rest of the UK where it's not. Consequently, buses are more highly used, more reliable, more frequent, and used by a wider cross-section of society than in the rest of the UK.
Erm. New York City. London, England. Two large cities whose economic centers are nowhere near their airports, but are near their trains.
The West and East Coast mainlines both have wifi, as does Eurostar.
Liquids were first restricted by the Brits, not the Americans. But there's no such restrictions on Eurostar, the most security-obsessed rail line in the UK, nor on other UK rail services. Trains are different. They are much more "mass" and much more last-minute than planes, and as such, people simply aren't prepared to put up with the same level of restrictions. The police have wittered on about introducing bomb detector arches permanently at Waterloo, for example, and have been met by howls of derision.
It's not just about intellectual validity, as you rightly say, but psychology doesn't all work in the direction of greater security.
I'm sorry, what? US health care was working well except for the tax and regulations? Well, you certainly seem to be enjoying the drugs they're giving you. Out in the real world, where people care about things like output per unit of input, otherwise known as productivity, US healthcare costs a bomb for some pretty shitty results. If you want to talk about a successful health system, quote Singapore, as people who actually know something about this field do.
Y'know, I'm always just a teensy bit sceptical of authors whose nominally empirical investigations into multiple different topics, across which they cannot hope to have expertise, just so happens to reach a set of conclusions that uniformly support one world-view -- in this case, that anything other than the untrammelled market is Very Bad.
Well, David Hockney is a pretty significant artist. And he describes his iPad as "a wonderful new drawing medium" albeit he is "at a loss as to how to make it pay"
see eg
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/may/11/david-hockney-ipad-drawings
He never said they catered for hardcore techheads well. But they certainly appear to aim their benefits descriptions at techheads rather than more mainstream consumers.
Gosh, you're right! I hope apple are bright enough to release a good smartphone with a built-in mp3 player, otherwise they're really in trouble.
I get your point on the first item, although I think Iran is quite a bit closer to being a dictatorship now than it was pre-election.
On the second point, the aim of the Israeli deterrent is presumably to reduce the chance of a large-scale existential attack on population centres via eg chemical weapons or (in extremis) a successful invasion.
Huh? "That makes sense" but "the Iranians are a wise bunch"? Those statements don't sit together.
Your. Logic is about; as good as your grammar which Is to say not very.
Yes, I was taking the piss out of your grammar.
Who's the we? I live in the UK.
Yes, I'm serious. Israel's not really interested in starting a nuclear war of aggression, Iran is. Botched raids on flotillas have got sod all to do with anything
Are you serious? You're cross about mislabelling of pipebombs but don't have anything to say about illegal wars and big lies about WMDs existing that didn't?
Nice priorities there
I described Iran as a messianic theocracy because its messianism and its theocratic nature is *precisely* what makes it more probable that they will use a nuke (which is something above and beyond simply committing mass murder, because the fall-out is that much worse, in every sense). Because they're messianic, they may seek to bring on the next stage of redemption (as they see it) through a cataclysm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haghani_Circle
Israel has religious messianic zealots too, who are forever trying to access Temple Mount etc etc, but they are a long way away from having any political power (although it has plenty of religious non-messianic zealots who have lots of power).
*What* is the Obama Administration's fault, precisely?
And *what* is the Bush Administration's fault?
Well now....the reason that people are relatively relaxed about Israel having 200 nukes and yet freaked out by the Iranians having just one is because Iran is run by a messianic fascist theocracy which really couldn't give a shit about killing several million people while Israel is a semi-secular rightwing democracy dedicated to keeping a few million people alive. So the cases aren't exactly parallel.
Cue Basil Fawlty-esque voice from that classic episode:
"Ohhhhhhhh, it's Obama's fault is it. Here's me thinking it might be Bush's fault for starting an illegal war, or Cheney's fault for encouraging lying about the presence of WMD, or Powell's fault for playing the willing patsy at the UN, but nooooo, it's Obama's because he's Muslim and black and won the election when I wanted the Republicans to be in power for longer. Well, he'll have to be punished then: who's a naughty boy, Barack"
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~clee/fawltytowers.html