...because, "it's," is already a contraction of, "it is."
Not "because". Otherwise we'd have trouble disambiguating "Google's" (possessive) and "Google's" (for Google is). Just admit the rule is arbitrary.
...in spite of its advantages...
These kinds of statements always bother me. English's advantages have nothing to do with its grammar, syntax or lexicon. It's the de facto lingua franca for science and business right now, but the fashionable language changes every couple of centuries or so, and for reasons that have nothing to do with anything inherent in the language.
Your specific example was for a government-granted and enforced monopoly, which is what I was debating.
It was one example for the sake of providing an example, and not even close to the core of the argument. The argument was that a capitalist who doesn't believe in the free market is not a contradiction. Dictionaries and out-of-print encyclopaedias don't enter into it. An actual book on economics would be more enlightening, but you've already stated that you'd trust Wikipedia over the library.
That's maybe a question of ethics. You can debate whether or not a privately-held monopoly is "right" or "wrong", but not whether or not it's capitalist. There are monopolies that were not government granted---what's known as natural monopolies. They use their monopolies to put an end to any competition that might creep up. In such a case, the market is not free either, but it's certainly capitalist. There are few who would say that's "right", but it is, beyond any shadow of doubt, capitalist.
The Free Market is tightly bound to Capitalism. Capitalism is not so tightly bound to the Free Market. The Free Market works best for the market overall, but the individual capitalists themselves would prefer a monopoly---a steady stream of income and power without having to innovate to maintain it.
Look back at where this started:
"For being so staunchly capitalist, big corporations sure hate the free market."
Which is bad for a Free Market system as a whole, but of course is exactly what you would expect of the individual capitalists. The Free Market relies on Capitalism and provides benefit to a greater number, but Capitalism itself gets along fine without a Free Market.
Competition is the key idea, not whether or not a company is free to sell their goods.
This is just bizarre. How can you have unfettered competition if a company isn't allowed to freely sell their goods?
There's nothing in the least bit bizarre about it. A monopoly can be free to sell their goods while competition is suppressed. The monopoly is still capitalist as they own the means of production---that is to say, the capital.
The important point that you are missing is not that it's not whether or not one is free to sell goods or services that defines a Free Market, it's the freedom to compete. As I stated in answer to someone else, guns are prohibited from being sold in Japan. Are you going to claim Japan's not a Free Market economy? They are both capitalist (capital--the means of production---being held privately) and a free market (companies are free to compete, and do: Toyota vs Suzuki vs Honda vs Nissan vs Daihatsu vs Mazda).
And in case you need an example of non-Free Market Capitalism, just look at AT&T before they had their monopoly taken away in the eighties. They were granted a monopoly. By law, they had no competition. However, they were owned privately and were free to sell whatever telephone-related goods or services they wanted. AT&T was entirely capitalist, but there was certainly no Free Market.
There is a tendency for Capitalism and Free Markets to go hand-in-hand. In fact, a Free Market depends on Capitalism---but not vice-versa.
Capitalism may be "dependent upon the free sale of products, yada yada yada" but is not dependent on the Free Market, which is a concept that has to do with companies freely competing for customers, not with how free you are to sell products.
In Japan, guns are strictly prohibited from being sold. Are they therefore not a Free Market economy?
I don't know what dictionary you have, but here's what the Concise Oxford says:
capitalism noun an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
-DERIVATIVES capitalist noun and adjective capitalistic adjective capitalistically adverb
Not that you should be learning about economic or political systems from dictionaries. Your local library should have an entire section on these subjects. You should especially get something that explains the concept of the free market, because the accepted definition diverges greatly from your understanding of it. Shortly: in a free market, companies are free to compete in the market. Competition is the key idea, not whether or not a company is free to sell their goods. You can have free market capitalism, but you can still have capitalism without a free market---capitalism tells us that private owners control the means of production, but doesn't tell us how they get their products to consumers.
According to the Concise Oxford: tyranny noun (plural tyrannies)
1. cruel and oppressive government or rule. >a state under such rule.
2. cruel and arbitrary excercise of power or control.
3. (especially in ancient Greece) rule by a tyrant.
According to the Oxford's definition (and common English usage) a democracy can, in fact, be tyrannical. Unless you put so much weight on derivations that you want to claim all homosexuals are happy.
Find a geek old enough to remember (over 38?) and ask about the first time he played with a Mac. Watch how their eyes light up.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I can't recall aver having liked the Mac back in the '80s. I wanted an a
Amiga but didn't have the money, so I had to stick with my Vic-20.
I'm seeing that effect now with everyone who think of themselves as a computer geek when they try the iPad.
I'm seeing my wife and the other girl at her work laughing at their boss who bought one and couldn't even figure out how it worked. So much for that "intuitive interface"!
angus77, I'd really like to ask you some questions about this and your school.
How'd your school secure the funding?
They're private (a quite large percentage of Japanese schools are), and the iPads are for the teachers, not students.
How much training has the staff been given?
None so far, but we don't get them until April.
How much training for students?
None, and they won't be getting any.
What have been some security thoughts with this implementation?
Apparently it's more secure than Windows. If it goes deeper than that, the info hasn't been passed on to me.
How much hardware infrastructure (wifi) had to be added?
I don't know. We're moving to a new location in April, and I haven't been inside the new building yet.
What insurance/damage policies are you putting in place?
I have no idea, but I assume you mean for when students steal or break the devices. Students won't be getting them.
What selection process are you using for software adoption?
I haven't a clue.
If you see this and would rather someone else from your district answer, I'll put my contact info out here for you.
That's very nice of you, but given that the school's (a) Japanese and (b) a private corporation I doubt you'll have much influence. I'm really sorry, I should've made that more clear in my original post. Really, it's a bureaucracy thing more than a technology thing. I was just venting.
I didn't make this clear in my original post, and I should have:
We're not being given iPads in addition to the laptops and desktops we already have. We're being made to remove all our desktops/laptops and use the iPads instead (for "security" reasons).
What I use my EeePC (10" screen, same as the iPad, so no advantage to the tablet there!) for is to type documents and worksheets, check things out on the internet to support what I'm typing, and to print. I do a lot of typing. In Emacs with LaTeX. The iPad will be a nightmare.
I've got a 10" EeePC. With Debian on it, the battery lasts 7 hours. At my job, I do copious amounts of typing.
If this thing had a flip/touch screen, I can't imagine what an iPad could possibly have over it. Not being able to type properly (and not being able to use Emacs!) are a BIG deal for me.
What's this talk about technology? The iPad is a fashion accessory. Android tablets are not fashionable.
Seriously, what is the point of a tablet device? At the high school I work at, we're going to be made to use iPad's starting in April. I've played around with one of the test devices and I can't imagine actually getting work done on these things. I'm dreading April. If it were an Android device it wouldn't be any better.
I haven't used their SDK for over a year, but I found that, while the simulator does take an annoying amount of time to start up, once it is started it runs just fine, even on my EeePC. I didn't use Eclipse, though---I used Emacs.
When I did a search for "angry birds" in the Marketplace, Angry Birds was the first result. Are you sure the game had been released yet when you searched for it?
Slashdot Mirror
...because, "it's," is already a contraction of, "it is."
Not "because". Otherwise we'd have trouble disambiguating "Google's" (possessive) and "Google's" (for Google is). Just admit the rule is arbitrary.
...in spite of its advantages...
These kinds of statements always bother me. English's advantages have nothing to do with its grammar, syntax or lexicon. It's the de facto lingua franca for science and business right now, but the fashionable language changes every couple of centuries or so, and for reasons that have nothing to do with anything inherent in the language.
Your specific example was for a government-granted and enforced monopoly, which is what I was debating.
It was one example for the sake of providing an example, and not even close to the core of the argument. The argument was that a capitalist who doesn't believe in the free market is not a contradiction. Dictionaries and out-of-print encyclopaedias don't enter into it. An actual book on economics would be more enlightening, but you've already stated that you'd trust Wikipedia over the library.
The Free Market is tightly bound to Capitalism. Capitalism is not so tightly bound to the Free Market. The Free Market works best for the market overall, but the individual capitalists themselves would prefer a monopoly---a steady stream of income and power without having to innovate to maintain it.
Look back at where this started:
"For being so staunchly capitalist, big corporations sure hate the free market."
Which is bad for a Free Market system as a whole, but of course is exactly what you would expect of the individual capitalists. The Free Market relies on Capitalism and provides benefit to a greater number, but Capitalism itself gets along fine without a Free Market.
Competition is the key idea, not whether or not a company is free to sell their goods.
This is just bizarre. How can you have unfettered competition if a company isn't allowed to freely sell their goods?
There's nothing in the least bit bizarre about it. A monopoly can be free to sell their goods while competition is suppressed. The monopoly is still capitalist as they own the means of production---that is to say, the capital.
The important point that you are missing is not that it's not whether or not one is free to sell goods or services that defines a Free Market, it's the freedom to compete. As I stated in answer to someone else, guns are prohibited from being sold in Japan. Are you going to claim Japan's not a Free Market economy? They are both capitalist (capital--the means of production---being held privately) and a free market (companies are free to compete, and do: Toyota vs Suzuki vs Honda vs Nissan vs Daihatsu vs Mazda).
And in case you need an example of non-Free Market Capitalism, just look at AT&T before they had their monopoly taken away in the eighties. They were granted a monopoly. By law, they had no competition. However, they were owned privately and were free to sell whatever telephone-related goods or services they wanted. AT&T was entirely capitalist, but there was certainly no Free Market.
There is a tendency for Capitalism and Free Markets to go hand-in-hand. In fact, a Free Market depends on Capitalism---but not vice-versa.
Capitalism may be "dependent upon the free sale of products, yada yada yada" but is not dependent on the Free Market, which is a concept that has to do with companies freely competing for customers, not with how free you are to sell products.
In Japan, guns are strictly prohibited from being sold. Are they therefore not a Free Market economy?
I don't know what dictionary you have, but here's what the Concise Oxford says:
capitalism
noun an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
-DERIVATIVES
capitalist noun and adjective
capitalistic adjective
capitalistically adverb
Not that you should be learning about economic or political systems from dictionaries. Your local library should have an entire section on these subjects. You should especially get something that explains the concept of the free market, because the accepted definition diverges greatly from your understanding of it. Shortly: in a free market, companies are free to compete in the market. Competition is the key idea, not whether or not a company is free to sell their goods. You can have free market capitalism, but you can still have capitalism without a free market---capitalism tells us that private owners control the means of production, but doesn't tell us how they get their products to consumers.
Capitalism != Free Market
The free market makes capitalists have to work harder for their profits. They'd much rather have the lazy security of a monopoly.
tyranny
noun (plural tyrannies)
According to the Oxford's definition (and common English usage) a democracy can, in fact, be tyrannical. Unless you put so much weight on derivations that you want to claim all homosexuals are happy.
Somebody mod this troll insightful!
"Inflammation of the Console"?
C'mon now, you can butcher the language in more creative ways than that.
Find a geek old enough to remember (over 38?) and ask about the first time he played with a Mac. Watch how their eyes light up.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I can't recall aver having liked the Mac back in the '80s. I wanted an a Amiga but didn't have the money, so I had to stick with my Vic-20.
I'm seeing that effect now with everyone who think of themselves as a computer geek when they try the iPad.
I'm seeing my wife and the other girl at her work laughing at their boss who bought one and couldn't even figure out how it worked. So much for that "intuitive interface"!
angus77, I'd really like to ask you some questions about this and your school.
They're private (a quite large percentage of Japanese schools are), and the iPads are for the teachers, not students.
How much training has the staff been given?
None so far, but we don't get them until April.
How much training for students?
None, and they won't be getting any.
What have been some security thoughts with this implementation?
Apparently it's more secure than Windows. If it goes deeper than that, the info hasn't been passed on to me.
How much hardware infrastructure (wifi) had to be added?
I don't know. We're moving to a new location in April, and I haven't been inside the new building yet.
What insurance/damage policies are you putting in place?
I have no idea, but I assume you mean for when students steal or break the devices. Students won't be getting them.
What selection process are you using for software adoption?
I haven't a clue.
If you see this and would rather someone else from your district answer, I'll put my contact info out here for you.
That's very nice of you, but given that the school's (a) Japanese and (b) a private corporation I doubt you'll have much influence. I'm really sorry, I should've made that more clear in my original post. Really, it's a bureaucracy thing more than a technology thing. I was just venting.
I didn't make this clear in my original post, and I should have:
We're not being given iPads in addition to the laptops and desktops we already have. We're being made to remove all our desktops/laptops and use the iPads instead (for "security" reasons).
What I use my EeePC (10" screen, same as the iPad, so no advantage to the tablet there!) for is to type documents and worksheets, check things out on the internet to support what I'm typing, and to print. I do a lot of typing. In Emacs with LaTeX. The iPad will be a nightmare.
Only morons choose tools and then go to look for jobs to do with them.
That's not a nice thing to say about my bosses!
I've got a 10" EeePC. With Debian on it, the battery lasts 7 hours. At my job, I do copious amounts of typing.
If this thing had a flip/touch screen, I can't imagine what an iPad could possibly have over it. Not being able to type properly (and not being able to use Emacs!) are a BIG deal for me.
What's this talk about technology? The iPad is a fashion accessory. Android tablets are not fashionable.
Seriously, what is the point of a tablet device? At the high school I work at, we're going to be made to use iPad's starting in April. I've played around with one of the test devices and I can't imagine actually getting work done on these things. I'm dreading April. If it were an Android device it wouldn't be any better.
The DreamPlug packs some serious power. It packs some serious power. It also packs some serious hardware which packs some serious power. Seriously.
When an app gets nothing but negative reviews, maybe you should think twice about installing it.
I haven't used their SDK for over a year, but I found that, while the simulator does take an annoying amount of time to start up, once it is started it runs just fine, even on my EeePC. I didn't use Eclipse, though---I used Emacs.
... Infinity Blade, World of Goo, Plants Vz Zombies, Infinity Blade...
Infinity Blade must be some game---you mentioned it twice!
When I did a search for "angry birds" in the Marketplace, Angry Birds was the first result. Are you sure the game had been released yet when you searched for it?
I can only sort contacts by first name....
What are you talking about? I have a Desire with Froyo and I can choose---on a contact by contact basis---whether to sort by first or last name.
I'll one up you. I'll circumvent buying a PS3. Take THAT Sony!
There are plenty of countries out there that have strong IP laws but don't truck with the bullshit that is the DMCA.
Indeed. In Japan, the iPhone and HTC Desire are both carried by the same carrier---Softbank.