I find it odd that you rail on the 2003 era BSG remake, because on most of these points, it did far better than any of its predecessors. Was it perfect? No, but on the grading curve of modern sci-fi accuracy (nevermind compared to the "real" one you laud), it was pretty damn good for how it handled its space battles, physics, etc. Pretty much the only exception was #3, within the confines of any of the large ships, but when out in the fighters, it was pretty apparent.
The US military ordered a massive stockpile of Purple Heart medals in anticipation of the casualties from the projected invasion - so many that even after Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, and Afghan/Iraq, we STILL haven't exhausted that stockpile.
What also aided them was the location of the fight. The aircraft on both sides had comparable range, but because the fighting in the Battle of Britain was over and around the British bases, the British fighters had a significant advantage in the amount of fuel they had available to dogfight with, whereas the German Bf-109s only had (IIRC) a few minutes of time before they had to return home.
Even when Germany was losing though, he kept doubling down on genocide, dedicating resources to the killing that could have been used for the war effort. It was that much more important to him.
See Timothy Snyder's latest work, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781101903452).
Are you satisfied with your most basic needs? Almost certainly not. There's always something else we want, whether it's a new iPhone, video games, a nicer/bigger apartment/house, a new car, vacations, etc. There will be incentive to work, even if you may only work for a piddling amount, because that money is pure discretionary income.
But here's the really cool thing - with a basic minimum income, we can also get rid of the minimum wage. After all, everyone already gets enough to survive, so we don't need to worry about legislating a wage floor. People are free to negotiate the value of their labor, because they're also free to tell their boss to shove it, and not worry they'll end up starving on the street.
It's sad really, because they miss who the real 'welfare queens' dining on champagne and caviar, with gilded iphones paid for by the Government - here's a hint, they're also referred to as "Beltway Bandits" or "Defense/Government Contracting firms."
Historically being the key word, because historically, 'automation' has meant giving workers tools that let them do the same job more efficiently. Rather than displacing workers, it just increases productivity, because those humans were still needed as operators. The problem is, that's becoming less and less the case. I'm not sure it is the case on a large enough scale, yet, but we can clearly see that someday it will be. We've already gone from an era where all it took to make a passable living was to be an able-bodied adult that was willing to work hard, without any special skills, to one where that increasingly just doesn't cut it for getting along yourself, let alone to support a family.
For instance, consider taxi drivers, regional and long haul truckers - what happens when they get replaced by self-driving robots? It's certainly a hell of a lot more efficient, but do you think that's going to create new jobs? The guy at the dispatch center and the mechanic already have a job. Maybe we get a new computer tech who specializes in fixing the computer side, but that's minuscule compared to the number of human roles eliminated. Worse, the job roles that are being eliminated are relatively low-complexity/low-education. Even if there were enough jobs, how many of those drivers do you think are going to be capable of retraining to do much more advanced analytical work?
We do have a serious problem in that from about the 70s/80s onward, the gains in productivity have become increasingly decoupled from wages. All the benefits are going to the rich, especially the seriously rich. But I disagree that automation - real automation, not just augmenting/aiding human workers - will never lead to increased unemployment.
Not to mention that Italy had already invaded Greece, and was bogged down fighting the Greeks.
Overall though, Hitler became grossly overconfident as a result of the 'easy' victory in France. Like most average people at the time, he was expecting a war that would be akin to World War I - ugly, slow, and brutal. The "Lightning War" in France was a huge shock to everyone (except perhaps the Panzer generals that came up with it) in the equivalent of the worldwide pundit class at the time, Hitler included. He didn't think he'd need to do anything particularly different against Russia, and expected the campaign would be quick and easy. "One swift kick, and the entire rotten structure will collapse."
It's because the Nazis cared more about their racist genocidal beliefs than they did about winning the war. For Hitler, losing the war and having Germany destroyed was an acceptable trade-off for murdering millions of Jews and others.
The bigger point was that they didn't need to start a war, at all, period.
Look at Europe today - who's the most dominant nation in the European Union, economically and politically? Germany - and that's after they were bombed all to hell, split in half for 50 years by the USA/USSR, not to mention stripped of various bits of land in the east that were given to Poland and Russia. While Germany wouldn't be the strongest power in the world, certainly, they'd have done a lot better for themselves had they not started an aggressive war.
There are reasons for some of this - partly the difference between what the locals call a city/place, and what the people that the Europeans first talked to called it, usually in a different language or dialect. Thus, it's not about "changing the name" so much as "getting other people to call it what we've actually always called it."
Now, I'm less familiar with India specifically, but I know this was the case in China for instance (and particularly the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese readings of the same characters, as with Peking and Beijing). In other cases, it's simply become accepted that the name is different for other languages - for instance, Japanese people don't call themselves "Japanese" or their nation "Japan" generally, the word in Japanese is Nihon/Nippon, with the commonly used western term coming from a transliteration through Cantonese and into the ears of Europeans to whom it sounded like "Japan".
Consider then that in the US, 90-95% of all criminal cases (state and federal) end up with the defendant pleading guilty, and never even go to trial in the first place. This is in part because of the propensity of prosecutors to threaten to load up the list of charges with a ridiculous number of things, unless you enter a guilty plea, meaning that it's either plead guilty to maybe 1-2 things, or run the risk that you'll end up going to jail for decades or more if you lose.
This is exactly the sort of thing they pulled on Aaron Swartz, and it's ridiculous. (Which isn't to say that a system like Japan's is necessarily better, just that we have our own share of problems here)
They do tend to bring only cases they think they'll win - there aren't any plea bargains (which is a huge improvement over the current US justice system). That said, they also have a big problem with police/prosecutors relying on (often coerced) confessions to win convictions.
Also, there has been something of a tradition that many judges are inclined to trust the prosecutors/police, that's only more recently been whittled away at with some of the evidence that's come to light in old cases with DNA evidence brought in. Consider Hakamada Iwao, who was found guilty of murder, only to be exonerated 45 years later when DNA testing proved his innocence. One of the original judges reportedly considered committing suicide out of shame over it:
I don't, but the reason I don't agree is because they're proposing a Manichean view, whereas the actual reality is far more nuanced than that. The tech moguls don't want a truly free market, but nor do they want the current one either. Instead, they want the "best" of both worlds.
What do I mean? Well, they want the ability to pay lower wages, if not third world wages, without actually having to move their operations lock stock and barrel to India or wherever else, and thus having to pay either in the short or long term for the other costs that would incur. In short, they want to have their cake and eat it too, and make the rest of us foot the bill, effectively.
So, no, I disagree that a fully free labor market is the exact opposite, because that completely ignores the fact that there are other things that a country like the US provides, and you can't completely divorce the labor market from that. I absolutely do believe that we should allow for immigration of the best and brightest - but that's not cheap, and what these companies really care about is getting access to the cheapest possible worker, over whom they have the largest possible control.
H-1Bs aren't a "free labor market" though. They're a distortion and an end run around the system, bringing in semi-indentured workers who are largely tied to one job, and unable to freely compete. Supposedly, they're only brought in at a much higher rate of pay than the going rate. In practice, most of them are brought in at the absolute minimum, working for Consulting firms that then contract out for work, so the H-1B isn't "replacing" a US worker at the consulting firm, but the Consulting firm sure as hell is contracting out to replace job duties formerly held by US workers. See the recent bits with Disney and SoCal Edison, for instance.
I'd much rather have skilled people just being sponsored for green cards, and then allowed to compete. But guess what - Microsoft and Facebook and all these companies aren't actually interested in that, they want H-1Bs. Gee, wonder why that could be.
Perhaps more importantly, the Register has reported that at least one of Sony's Xperia phones (the M4) is not only IP65/68 compliant, but passes their "IP-Beer" test:
"More importantly, the M4 passes The Reg’s IP-booze test, which mandates immersion in two pints of lager for one hour, then being left to dry while said lager is drunk and then dropped onto the toilet floor after being used singlehandedly as the aforementioned alcoholic beverage is disposed of."
They'll scream and cry about the money they're having to pay in mileage, and neglect to mention how much money they're saving by not having a central office/work site in the first place.
When I go into the office I regularly work in, it's my choice where I live. I can choose to live an hour away if I want, or five minutes away. Now, there may be other tradeoffs in that, but it's my choice.
On the other hand, if I'm being sent to different customer/client sites, then I really can't choose to live closer or farther from work. I live where I live, and they require me to travel there as part of my duties.
With anything, whether it's a superhero/comic book movie, a video game movie, or a D&D/Fantasy genre movie, you need a good story and a good script. You absolutely can't rely on the IP itself to make things good. It also has to be capable of appealing both to the original fans, and to the wider audience that knows jack about it. There have been good, and bad, examples of each of these. You're definitely not going to get away with just having a two hour commercial, or with something so cheesy that people can't get into the story, etc.
But it can be done, and when it happens, people in Hollywood will be falling all over themselves to make more (many of which will suck - see the recent Fantastic Four movie for instance, or, better yet, don't). I'm particularly interested to see how the World of Warcraft movie is going to turn out, because from the sound of it, they have a good story, a good director, and a general good idea of how to present their product on film. Sure, it'll be a CGI-fest, but that's kind of to be expected when going with that sort of environment.
That said, Blizzard does know how to tell a story. I remain unconvinced that anyone in D&D-land (WoTC/Hasbro/etc) knows how to do that on the big screen.
If I'm not mistaken, this may be part of why she's dropping it. I recall reading somewhere that Kleiner Perkins offered to not demand that she pay their attorney fees if she dropped the appeal.
Perhaps a better quote is from Douglas Adams in Restaurant at the End of the Universe:
"The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarise: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Slashdot Mirror
I find it odd that you rail on the 2003 era BSG remake, because on most of these points, it did far better than any of its predecessors. Was it perfect? No, but on the grading curve of modern sci-fi accuracy (nevermind compared to the "real" one you laud), it was pretty damn good for how it handled its space battles, physics, etc. Pretty much the only exception was #3, within the confines of any of the large ships, but when out in the fighters, it was pretty apparent.
The US military ordered a massive stockpile of Purple Heart medals in anticipation of the casualties from the projected invasion - so many that even after Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, and Afghan/Iraq, we STILL haven't exhausted that stockpile.
What also aided them was the location of the fight. The aircraft on both sides had comparable range, but because the fighting in the Battle of Britain was over and around the British bases, the British fighters had a significant advantage in the amount of fuel they had available to dogfight with, whereas the German Bf-109s only had (IIRC) a few minutes of time before they had to return home.
Even when Germany was losing though, he kept doubling down on genocide, dedicating resources to the killing that could have been used for the war effort. It was that much more important to him.
See Timothy Snyder's latest work, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781101903452).
You can find a decent summation here along with an insightful interview with the author: http://www.theatlantic.com/int...
Sure there is.
Are you satisfied with your most basic needs? Almost certainly not. There's always something else we want, whether it's a new iPhone, video games, a nicer/bigger apartment/house, a new car, vacations, etc. There will be incentive to work, even if you may only work for a piddling amount, because that money is pure discretionary income.
But here's the really cool thing - with a basic minimum income, we can also get rid of the minimum wage. After all, everyone already gets enough to survive, so we don't need to worry about legislating a wage floor. People are free to negotiate the value of their labor, because they're also free to tell their boss to shove it, and not worry they'll end up starving on the street.
It's sad really, because they miss who the real 'welfare queens' dining on champagne and caviar, with gilded iphones paid for by the Government - here's a hint, they're also referred to as "Beltway Bandits" or "Defense/Government Contracting firms."
Historically being the key word, because historically, 'automation' has meant giving workers tools that let them do the same job more efficiently. Rather than displacing workers, it just increases productivity, because those humans were still needed as operators. The problem is, that's becoming less and less the case. I'm not sure it is the case on a large enough scale, yet, but we can clearly see that someday it will be. We've already gone from an era where all it took to make a passable living was to be an able-bodied adult that was willing to work hard, without any special skills, to one where that increasingly just doesn't cut it for getting along yourself, let alone to support a family.
For instance, consider taxi drivers, regional and long haul truckers - what happens when they get replaced by self-driving robots? It's certainly a hell of a lot more efficient, but do you think that's going to create new jobs? The guy at the dispatch center and the mechanic already have a job. Maybe we get a new computer tech who specializes in fixing the computer side, but that's minuscule compared to the number of human roles eliminated. Worse, the job roles that are being eliminated are relatively low-complexity/low-education. Even if there were enough jobs, how many of those drivers do you think are going to be capable of retraining to do much more advanced analytical work?
We do have a serious problem in that from about the 70s/80s onward, the gains in productivity have become increasingly decoupled from wages. All the benefits are going to the rich, especially the seriously rich. But I disagree that automation - real automation, not just augmenting/aiding human workers - will never lead to increased unemployment.
Not to mention that Italy had already invaded Greece, and was bogged down fighting the Greeks.
Overall though, Hitler became grossly overconfident as a result of the 'easy' victory in France. Like most average people at the time, he was expecting a war that would be akin to World War I - ugly, slow, and brutal. The "Lightning War" in France was a huge shock to everyone (except perhaps the Panzer generals that came up with it) in the equivalent of the worldwide pundit class at the time, Hitler included. He didn't think he'd need to do anything particularly different against Russia, and expected the campaign would be quick and easy. "One swift kick, and the entire rotten structure will collapse."
It's because the Nazis cared more about their racist genocidal beliefs than they did about winning the war. For Hitler, losing the war and having Germany destroyed was an acceptable trade-off for murdering millions of Jews and others.
The bigger point was that they didn't need to start a war, at all, period.
Look at Europe today - who's the most dominant nation in the European Union, economically and politically? Germany - and that's after they were bombed all to hell, split in half for 50 years by the USA/USSR, not to mention stripped of various bits of land in the east that were given to Poland and Russia. While Germany wouldn't be the strongest power in the world, certainly, they'd have done a lot better for themselves had they not started an aggressive war.
Pretty sure he already answered that one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Yes, but comments are much more difficult to translate directly into data points than simple clicks of approval.
There are reasons for some of this - partly the difference between what the locals call a city/place, and what the people that the Europeans first talked to called it, usually in a different language or dialect. Thus, it's not about "changing the name" so much as "getting other people to call it what we've actually always called it." Now, I'm less familiar with India specifically, but I know this was the case in China for instance (and particularly the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese readings of the same characters, as with Peking and Beijing). In other cases, it's simply become accepted that the name is different for other languages - for instance, Japanese people don't call themselves "Japanese" or their nation "Japan" generally, the word in Japanese is Nihon/Nippon, with the commonly used western term coming from a transliteration through Cantonese and into the ears of Europeans to whom it sounded like "Japan".
It's not a bad idea. After all, I hear hookers have a very high lift to thrust ratio...
Consider then that in the US, 90-95% of all criminal cases (state and federal) end up with the defendant pleading guilty, and never even go to trial in the first place. This is in part because of the propensity of prosecutors to threaten to load up the list of charges with a ridiculous number of things, unless you enter a guilty plea, meaning that it's either plead guilty to maybe 1-2 things, or run the risk that you'll end up going to jail for decades or more if you lose.
This is exactly the sort of thing they pulled on Aaron Swartz, and it's ridiculous. (Which isn't to say that a system like Japan's is necessarily better, just that we have our own share of problems here)
They do tend to bring only cases they think they'll win - there aren't any plea bargains (which is a huge improvement over the current US justice system). That said, they also have a big problem with police/prosecutors relying on (often coerced) confessions to win convictions.
Also, there has been something of a tradition that many judges are inclined to trust the prosecutors/police, that's only more recently been whittled away at with some of the evidence that's come to light in old cases with DNA evidence brought in. Consider Hakamada Iwao, who was found guilty of murder, only to be exonerated 45 years later when DNA testing proved his innocence. One of the original judges reportedly considered committing suicide out of shame over it:
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...
Senator Wyden has been pretty vociferously against mass surveillance, on repeated occasions.
Some examples:
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfro...
I don't, but the reason I don't agree is because they're proposing a Manichean view, whereas the actual reality is far more nuanced than that. The tech moguls don't want a truly free market, but nor do they want the current one either. Instead, they want the "best" of both worlds.
What do I mean? Well, they want the ability to pay lower wages, if not third world wages, without actually having to move their operations lock stock and barrel to India or wherever else, and thus having to pay either in the short or long term for the other costs that would incur. In short, they want to have their cake and eat it too, and make the rest of us foot the bill, effectively.
So, no, I disagree that a fully free labor market is the exact opposite, because that completely ignores the fact that there are other things that a country like the US provides, and you can't completely divorce the labor market from that. I absolutely do believe that we should allow for immigration of the best and brightest - but that's not cheap, and what these companies really care about is getting access to the cheapest possible worker, over whom they have the largest possible control.
H-1Bs aren't a "free labor market" though. They're a distortion and an end run around the system, bringing in semi-indentured workers who are largely tied to one job, and unable to freely compete. Supposedly, they're only brought in at a much higher rate of pay than the going rate. In practice, most of them are brought in at the absolute minimum, working for Consulting firms that then contract out for work, so the H-1B isn't "replacing" a US worker at the consulting firm, but the Consulting firm sure as hell is contracting out to replace job duties formerly held by US workers. See the recent bits with Disney and SoCal Edison, for instance.
I'd much rather have skilled people just being sponsored for green cards, and then allowed to compete. But guess what - Microsoft and Facebook and all these companies aren't actually interested in that, they want H-1Bs. Gee, wonder why that could be.
Perhaps more importantly, the Register has reported that at least one of Sony's Xperia phones (the M4) is not only IP65/68 compliant, but passes their "IP-Beer" test:
"More importantly, the M4 passes The Reg’s IP-booze test, which mandates immersion in two pints of lager for one hour, then being left to dry while said lager is drunk and then dropped onto the toilet floor after being used singlehandedly as the aforementioned alcoholic beverage is disposed of."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
They'll scream and cry about the money they're having to pay in mileage, and neglect to mention how much money they're saving by not having a central office/work site in the first place.
They claim that, but here's the difference.
When I go into the office I regularly work in, it's my choice where I live. I can choose to live an hour away if I want, or five minutes away. Now, there may be other tradeoffs in that, but it's my choice.
On the other hand, if I'm being sent to different customer/client sites, then I really can't choose to live closer or farther from work. I live where I live, and they require me to travel there as part of my duties.
With anything, whether it's a superhero/comic book movie, a video game movie, or a D&D/Fantasy genre movie, you need a good story and a good script. You absolutely can't rely on the IP itself to make things good. It also has to be capable of appealing both to the original fans, and to the wider audience that knows jack about it. There have been good, and bad, examples of each of these. You're definitely not going to get away with just having a two hour commercial, or with something so cheesy that people can't get into the story, etc.
But it can be done, and when it happens, people in Hollywood will be falling all over themselves to make more (many of which will suck - see the recent Fantastic Four movie for instance, or, better yet, don't). I'm particularly interested to see how the World of Warcraft movie is going to turn out, because from the sound of it, they have a good story, a good director, and a general good idea of how to present their product on film. Sure, it'll be a CGI-fest, but that's kind of to be expected when going with that sort of environment.
That said, Blizzard does know how to tell a story. I remain unconvinced that anyone in D&D-land (WoTC/Hasbro/etc) knows how to do that on the big screen.
If I'm not mistaken, this may be part of why she's dropping it. I recall reading somewhere that Kleiner Perkins offered to not demand that she pay their attorney fees if she dropped the appeal.
Perhaps a better quote is from Douglas Adams in Restaurant at the End of the Universe:
"The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarise: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem."