True I guess. I do know many Americans, but they do tend to be above-average-clueful.
I guess I should've rephrased; it's incomprehensible to me why anyone with a clue would accept it.
> A pop culture view of the matter would have you believe instead that we oscillate between largely separated viewpoints every few generations, getting nowhere in the end.
True, and that's rather frustrating. "Newton was wrong !", well that kinda depends on how you define "wrong", now doesn't it ? At human-scale problems, Newton tends to be right to a dozen significant figures, for most problems, the errors in your data will be millions of times larger than the errors introduced by Newton.
It's no a question of tossing out Newton, and finding something unrelated. It's a question of extending and refining newton, so that the equation works for certain new cases, but for all the classical cases, it really makes no difference, and indeed using Einstein would be "wrong" in the sense that it'd give a lot of extra effort for no benefit whatsoever. (if you're calculating how long car X needs to get to 100mph, there is no difference between the answer 8 seconds, and the answer 8 + 10^-17 seconds, especially not if power of the engine is known only to 2 significant figures)
True. "works for me, and is good enough" trumps "theorethically marginally better, but requires you to toss away all your current players" every time.
There's a point where improvements in quality CAN trump an established player. People -did- care about casette-cd or vinyl-cd advantages. Sound-quality was part of that, but I think random-access and ease-of-use might have been equally important.
Most people who listen to music has changed from CD to mp3 too, and the argument wasn't better sound-quality (most mp3s are created from the CD anyway, so it can at best sound indistinguishable, in practice it's often worse), but again increased convenience. 2000 songs in an ipod, categorized by genre, artist, release-year or what-have-you is more convenient than lugging around 200 CDs.
But swap mp3 for some other format that can produce equally good sound, at say 75% the filesize, and all you get is a collective yawn. My music-collection takes up 2% of my hard-disc as it is, who CARES if it's 2% or 1.5% ? And it's not as if harddisch-sizes have stopped growing.
Transfer-speeds ? Listen, I can already download a good-quality mp3 at 100 times realtime, i.e. around 30 songs a minute. Who -cares- if it'd be 150 times realtime with this other format ? It just doesn't matter.
And the patents ? They'll expire. They're not a -practical- problem for any home-user, both decoders and encoders are freely and plentifully available for all operating-systems, and work fine in practice.
Fixed fraction of the wealthiest person is impractical, because that changes so much and so rapidly and randomly.
What one could do, would be fixed fraction of the average income in the top 10% or top 25%.
Most Americans aren't aware of it, but the income-differences in USA really -are- grotesque as compared to 95% of the developed world. GINI is a measure of income-inequality where 1 would mean only the richest person had income at all, everyone else earns zero, and 0 would mean everyone has identical income.
Real countries are somewhere in between, offcourse. The tendency is for dictatorships, fascist countries and poor countries to have high indexes (only a tiny elite has good education and good income), whereas developed countries where reasonable education is available to all, has much lower indexes.
Most countries as developed as USA are at under 0.30, 0.30 is the average for european union for example, and the tendency is that the poorer countries are more unequal whereas the richest countries such as Sweden are around 0.25
USA ? 0.45 -- surrounded by countries such as the ivory coast, uruguay and uganda.
In short, if you're poor in USA, you're as far away from the rich-elite as you are in typical third-world countries that are ruled by a tiny elite that holds all the priviledges.
The military is (nominally) in control and cooperation with the leaders in Afghanistan, USA is not, infact, at the moment at war with Afghanistan. There's an armed conflict with certain groups that exist inside Afghanistan, true. Who ensures that the drones kill only people who're part of that ?
If -that- isn't an argument that your medical system is fundamentally FUBARed then I don't know what is.
It's the worlds most expensive by far, has mediocre results (compare infant mortality or any other stat you can think of to any other country that spends above half the amount you spend) AND it regularily brings families into financial ruin, families that are ALREADY facing seriuos health-problems of one of the family-members, even those who HAVE insurance. (nevermind those who don't)
It's COMPLETELY incomprehencible to me that anyone is willing to accept that crap. Seriously.
Here's the thing. There's some people, and some situations, where the apropriate response when that person asks for more credit is, quite simply, "no".
You're assuming that overall, giving people the possibility of taking on even more very expensive debt, despite no credit-worthiness, no collateral, and generally a proven track-record of defaulting, is doing anyone a service. It is not.
If your friend has low income, and a terrible credit-history. It's quite likely that the LAST thing she needs is even more debt, at terribly expensive terms.
It's the "I can't afford to/buy/ the car at $3000, so I'll finance it on terrible terms and pay $5000 for it over 3 years instead. This doesn't, generally speaking, help your economy.
Sure. But the argument is still a good one. Kids who get a shiny new fun toy which doesn't directly contribute a lot to academic learning, will generally spend some time with the toy, and might as a result of that learn less than they otherwise would.
The study is spesifically about playstations. But might it be that the same thing would have happened with most -other- forms of shiny-new-fun-toy too ? i.e. that the results are really independent of "gaming" as such ? Would kids who got a new funky bike spend less time doing homework ? I don't know, but seems a reasonable enough hypothesis.
It's improving in some ways, true. Win7 is actually less of a pain in the behind than Vista, agreed.
There's still a few major roadblocks though. For example the difficulty, not to say impossibility, of keeping updated a windows-computer with a few dozen programs on it, due to each program needing to be updated separately, and some programs having no mechanisms for that at all. (whereas other programs, like Acrobat, like to have their own little silly auto-updater run ALL the time, because there's an update to them every few months)
Fair point, if you want to pay private individuals on a regular basis, and don't want to carry cash to do that with. As for businesses, I've got no idea why you think the business needs to be "fixed", there's mobile terminals for doing this, there's no more reason a payterminal needs to be tethered, than say a phone needs to be tethered.
It's true there's costs. Typically not transaction-fees, but you do pay a fee to borrow or permanently have one of the terminal-thingies. It's considered cheaper than dealing with cash though. (dealing with cash takes -time-, and is an inherently high-risk operation, if you have a lot of it lying around, you need precautions against theft etc, which also isn't free) I guess cheques might be better than cash, from the payers perspective. The recipient, though, has an additional worry: he doesn't actually know that there's money to cover the cheque. Want to take a guess at what it costs businesses to deal with bounced cheques ?
But that's not what you do for a simple service. You insert your chip-card in the reader, and enter your TAN when asked to confirm the amount. The entire process takes less than 10 seconds, to the point where people who pay -cash- are holding up the line because it takes twice as long as paying by card. And yeah, behind the scenes, when you do that, what happens is that money is transfered from your account to the service-provider. So what ?
A bit like discovering that your boss still writes all business-correspondence with a feather that he dips in a inkwell and write on parchment.
Yes, sure, one can do that. And yes, sure, there's -some- advantages to that, I suppose. Nevertheless most people would react by going "you do -WHAT- ?"
I wonder sometimes, if you're aware of -how- archaic cheques seem to someone from say Scandinavia. Sure, you -can- use cheques here too, you know ? It's just that people will look at you as if you show up at work with a horse instead of a car.
Not only is internet-banking with direct-transfer the norm, but I can, for example, completely change banks without leaving the chair in which I'm currently sitting, and have, agreements with companies to directly withdraw from my account stay in effect. Some companies instead send an electronic bill, which show up in the bank automatically (but must be manually confirmed to be paid), and yes, those too will show up in my new bank as they should, with no need to inform the companies that I've switched banks.
That's just one random example. The point is that at a first glance, the bank-services I see in USA, remind me most of how things used to work here, in the 1970ies or 80ies. Very far from what I'd consider modern or practical.
Well, I guess that's true for those people who have nothing of value except the house.
For the rest of us though, the credit-card-companies do a lot more than "send bitchy letters".
You're in essence arguing that credit-card-debt is preferable, if you take up debt that you expect there's a high risk you'll be unable to pay. That's a pretty stupid thing to do in the first place though. And in -practice- lots of people -do- pay the minimum payments, year after year. In other words, they manage to cover the dept at 14%APR or whatever. If they can do that, they obviously could do it even better at 3%.
I don't. And I'm aware of that loophole. That credit-card-companies give 1-2 months of interest-free credit, in an attempt to make people use the cards more, because they know that many of the people who plan to pay the entire debt, infact fail to do so.
Yes, for people with the required self-control, that's a reasonable thing to do, take advantage of the free credit, but never pay any interest. I agree.
Most people though, don't have that self-control in practice. Did you look up the average interest-bearing credit-card-debt of american households anytime recently ?
Yeah. I agree. People who insist on behaving like children, should rather have the bank hold their hand.
Here's a hint: many adult human beings are perfectly capable of realizing that just because they -can- max out the credit-line, doesn't mean it's a wise thing to do.
But by all means, if you're happy with paying 10% rather than 3%, for the benefit of being held in the hand by the bank, rather than treated as an adult human being, then more power to you. (and more money to the bank !)
The problem is that only apps which Apple, at their sole discretion, likes, are allowed. They can, and have, arbitrarily change the rules whenever they feel like it.
For example, they currently decided they do not like any app which has any kind of scantily clad people in it. Just like that. A month ago, those where numerous, now, they're nil.
This is particularily relevant for apps which benefit the consumer, but lead to lower income for apple and/or the carriers. Also for apps which are in any sense controversial.
USA is insane. I mean, the entire cheque-thing ? Hello ? As if it's not ridicolous to begin with, do you send email by handwriting it on paper, then taking a PHOTO of the letter, and sending that to your friend ? No ? Then why is doing the same thing with cheques reasonable ?
I pay my credit, exactly like you do, it's an account like any other, with the exception that the saldo is generally negative other than positive, and so I pay, rather than get, interest.
But differently from yours, mine really -is- an account like any other, meaning I can transfer money into that account, or out of it. Yes, this means if my credit is at -1000 and I transfer and additional 100 out of it, I now owe 1100. What a concept !
Oh, and what's up with paying huge interest-rates on a "credit card" when most people have a much cheaper line of credit backed by their house anyways ? How does it make sense to borrow from the credit-card-company and pay 10% interest or something, when mortgage-rates are a third that ?
I've only -got- one line of credit. It's secured with the house. There's a limit at 75% of fair market value, and the interest is like 3%. (i.e. what people generally pay for a mortgage here at the moment)
Cheques ? Yeah, my grandmother used to have those, when I was real tiny. Like in the 70ies. They where obsolete even then, frankly, but some older folks where still using them.
US banks should get with the program. Being able to take a -photo- of a cheque and mail it to your bank is something only Rube Goldberg would've been proud of.
Making it DLC, rather than part of the main-deal has two consequences, both of which are negative for the consumer, but good for the greedy developer.
First, offcourse, it might entice some to in essence buy a $60+5 game, whereas the same people might have balked at just calling it a $65 game to begin with.
Second, however, DLC hurts the second-hand market. If the game was $5 more, but this content was included, it'd have been included on resale too. But this way, the value of that fraction of the game that you can resell, is lower.
Dragon Age Origins had the same bullshit; codes for DLC included with the original game. That content could just as well just have been included on the disc, but if it was, you could've resold the entire game, including that content, now you can still resell the game itself, but the buyer will be missing those pieces (or will need to pay to download them)
But you can't detect latency, because the programs view of EVERYTHING, including the system-clock, is subject to the whims of whoever is running in ring-0.
i.e. you cannot detect that you've been virtualised and are running in a simulation, as opposed to on the bare metal, by looking at a clock, because the clock itself will be virtualised too.
It's always a officer of the same sex as the one being investigated.
Always wondered what would happen if you turned your gayness to the stratosphere and loudly proclaimed your enthusiasm at being patted down by the/gorgeous/ young man over there.
Yeah. But good luck with that. Even average people have dozens, or sometimes even hundreds of objects on or with them, do you want to spend hours checking each of them ? Sure -if- you're already suspicious of someone, you perform a more thorough check, but you can't do that to everyone, or even a significant fraction. (though I've never once in my life experienced a check that would've found such a coin)
Free and open markets are "better" than state-controlled planned economies.
For roughly the same reason, a platform where anyone can freely make available any application they wish, is "better" than one where the ecosystem is controlled by a single player.
Your argument is invalid, even if the iphone came with the *possibility* of getting software from any source you choose, you could still *choose* to use only apps from Apples appstore. You're arguing that it's in your advantage to be -forced- to make that choice. And that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, frankly.
Nah. Seriously not. It's true that the average cost of funerals has risen with standard of living. That makes perfect sense, because the benefit of a nicer funeral is the same whereas the cost is less and less.
Put more simply, if a nicer funeral would cost a years salary, and you where living on the bare essentials, you'd make do without, whereas if the same nicer funeral would cost you a weeks salary, and could be covered by shortening your bahamas-vacation from 14 to 10 days, you might do it.
Giving people $15K makes them sligthly richer, agreed. It's completely unreasonably however, to suppose they'd want to spend 100% of this increased richness for funerals. Why would they ?
Yes, generally if people have more money, they'll spend more for everything, including funerals. Someone who is richer will have a tendency to have a sligthly more expensive house, a sligthly more expensive car, a sligthly more expensive vacation, and yes, a sligthly more expensive funeral. No argument with that.
But you seemed to be saying that additional money would get distributed 100% to funerals, 0% to all other spendings. I don't see any rationale for that at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a hint: If your map doesn't seem to correspond with the actual terrain -- the terrain is right.
True I guess. I do know many Americans, but they do tend to be above-average-clueful. I guess I should've rephrased; it's incomprehensible to me why anyone with a clue would accept it.
> A pop culture view of the matter would have you believe instead that we oscillate between largely separated viewpoints every few generations, getting nowhere in the end.
True, and that's rather frustrating. "Newton was wrong !", well that kinda depends on how you define "wrong", now doesn't it ? At human-scale problems, Newton tends to be right to a dozen significant figures, for most problems, the errors in your data will be millions of times larger than the errors introduced by Newton.
It's no a question of tossing out Newton, and finding something unrelated. It's a question of extending and refining newton, so that the equation works for certain new cases, but for all the classical cases, it really makes no difference, and indeed using Einstein would be "wrong" in the sense that it'd give a lot of extra effort for no benefit whatsoever. (if you're calculating how long car X needs to get to 100mph, there is no difference between the answer 8 seconds, and the answer 8 + 10^-17 seconds, especially not if power of the engine is known only to 2 significant figures)
True. "works for me, and is good enough" trumps "theorethically marginally better, but requires you to toss away all your current players" every time.
There's a point where improvements in quality CAN trump an established player. People -did- care about casette-cd or vinyl-cd advantages. Sound-quality was part of that, but I think random-access and ease-of-use might have been equally important.
Most people who listen to music has changed from CD to mp3 too, and the argument wasn't better sound-quality (most mp3s are created from the CD anyway, so it can at best sound indistinguishable, in practice it's often worse), but again increased convenience. 2000 songs in an ipod, categorized by genre, artist, release-year or what-have-you is more convenient than lugging around 200 CDs.
But swap mp3 for some other format that can produce equally good sound, at say 75% the filesize, and all you get is a collective yawn. My music-collection takes up 2% of my hard-disc as it is, who CARES if it's 2% or 1.5% ? And it's not as if harddisch-sizes have stopped growing.
Transfer-speeds ? Listen, I can already download a good-quality mp3 at 100 times realtime, i.e. around 30 songs a minute. Who -cares- if it'd be 150 times realtime with this other format ? It just doesn't matter.
And the patents ? They'll expire. They're not a -practical- problem for any home-user, both decoders and encoders are freely and plentifully available for all operating-systems, and work fine in practice.
Fixed fraction of the wealthiest person is impractical, because that changes so much and so rapidly and randomly.
What one could do, would be fixed fraction of the average income in the top 10% or top 25%.
Most Americans aren't aware of it, but the income-differences in USA really -are- grotesque as compared to 95% of the developed world. GINI is a measure of income-inequality where 1 would mean only the richest person had income at all, everyone else earns zero, and 0 would mean everyone has identical income.
Real countries are somewhere in between, offcourse. The tendency is for dictatorships, fascist countries and poor countries to have high indexes (only a tiny elite has good education and good income), whereas developed countries where reasonable education is available to all, has much lower indexes.
Have a look at the map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.png
Most countries as developed as USA are at under 0.30, 0.30 is the average for european union for example, and the tendency is that the poorer countries are more unequal whereas the richest countries such as Sweden are around 0.25
USA ? 0.45 -- surrounded by countries such as the ivory coast, uruguay and uganda.
In short, if you're poor in USA, you're as far away from the rich-elite as you are in typical third-world countries that are ruled by a tiny elite that holds all the priviledges.
Grotesque.
Except when it isn't, you know ?
The military is (nominally) in control and cooperation with the leaders in Afghanistan, USA is not, infact, at the moment at war with Afghanistan. There's an armed conflict with certain groups that exist inside Afghanistan, true. Who ensures that the drones kill only people who're part of that ?
If -that- isn't an argument that your medical system is fundamentally FUBARed then I don't know what is.
It's the worlds most expensive by far, has mediocre results (compare infant mortality or any other stat you can think of to any other country that spends above half the amount you spend) AND it regularily brings families into financial ruin, families that are ALREADY facing seriuos health-problems of one of the family-members, even those who HAVE insurance. (nevermind those who don't)
It's COMPLETELY incomprehencible to me that anyone is willing to accept that crap. Seriously.
Here's the thing. There's some people, and some situations, where the apropriate response when that person asks for more credit is, quite simply, "no".
You're assuming that overall, giving people the possibility of taking on even more very expensive debt, despite no credit-worthiness, no collateral, and generally a proven track-record of defaulting, is doing anyone a service. It is not.
If your friend has low income, and a terrible credit-history. It's quite likely that the LAST thing she needs is even more debt, at terribly expensive terms.
It's the "I can't afford to /buy/ the car at $3000, so I'll finance it on terrible terms and pay $5000 for it over 3 years instead. This doesn't, generally speaking, help your economy.
Sure. But the argument is still a good one. Kids who get a shiny new fun toy which doesn't directly contribute a lot to academic learning, will generally spend some time with the toy, and might as a result of that learn less than they otherwise would.
The study is spesifically about playstations. But might it be that the same thing would have happened with most -other- forms of shiny-new-fun-toy too ? i.e. that the results are really independent of "gaming" as such ? Would kids who got a new funky bike spend less time doing homework ? I don't know, but seems a reasonable enough hypothesis.
It's improving in some ways, true. Win7 is actually less of a pain in the behind than Vista, agreed.
There's still a few major roadblocks though. For example the difficulty, not to say impossibility, of keeping updated a windows-computer with a few dozen programs on it, due to each program needing to be updated separately, and some programs having no mechanisms for that at all. (whereas other programs, like Acrobat, like to have their own little silly auto-updater run ALL the time, because there's an update to them every few months)
Fair point, if you want to pay private individuals on a regular basis, and don't want to carry cash to do that with. As for businesses, I've got no idea why you think the business needs to be "fixed", there's mobile terminals for doing this, there's no more reason a payterminal needs to be tethered, than say a phone needs to be tethered.
It's true there's costs. Typically not transaction-fees, but you do pay a fee to borrow or permanently have one of the terminal-thingies. It's considered cheaper than dealing with cash though. (dealing with cash takes -time-, and is an inherently high-risk operation, if you have a lot of it lying around, you need precautions against theft etc, which also isn't free) I guess cheques might be better than cash, from the payers perspective. The recipient, though, has an additional worry: he doesn't actually know that there's money to cover the cheque. Want to take a guess at what it costs businesses to deal with bounced cheques ?
But that's not what you do for a simple service. You insert your chip-card in the reader, and enter your TAN when asked to confirm the amount. The entire process takes less than 10 seconds, to the point where people who pay -cash- are holding up the line because it takes twice as long as paying by card. And yeah, behind the scenes, when you do that, what happens is that money is transfered from your account to the service-provider. So what ?
I know. It just seems so.... archaic ? you know ?
A bit like discovering that your boss still writes all business-correspondence with a feather that he dips in a inkwell and write on parchment.
Yes, sure, one can do that. And yes, sure, there's -some- advantages to that, I suppose. Nevertheless most people would react by going "you do -WHAT- ?"
I wonder sometimes, if you're aware of -how- archaic cheques seem to someone from say Scandinavia. Sure, you -can- use cheques here too, you know ? It's just that people will look at you as if you show up at work with a horse instead of a car.
Not only is internet-banking with direct-transfer the norm, but I can, for example, completely change banks without leaving the chair in which I'm currently sitting, and have, agreements with companies to directly withdraw from my account stay in effect. Some companies instead send an electronic bill, which show up in the bank automatically (but must be manually confirmed to be paid), and yes, those too will show up in my new bank as they should, with no need to inform the companies that I've switched banks.
That's just one random example. The point is that at a first glance, the bank-services I see in USA, remind me most of how things used to work here, in the 1970ies or 80ies. Very far from what I'd consider modern or practical.
Well, I guess that's true for those people who have nothing of value except the house. For the rest of us though, the credit-card-companies do a lot more than "send bitchy letters". You're in essence arguing that credit-card-debt is preferable, if you take up debt that you expect there's a high risk you'll be unable to pay. That's a pretty stupid thing to do in the first place though. And in -practice- lots of people -do- pay the minimum payments, year after year. In other words, they manage to cover the dept at 14%APR or whatever. If they can do that, they obviously could do it even better at 3%.
I don't. And I'm aware of that loophole. That credit-card-companies give 1-2 months of interest-free credit, in an attempt to make people use the cards more, because they know that many of the people who plan to pay the entire debt, infact fail to do so.
Yes, for people with the required self-control, that's a reasonable thing to do, take advantage of the free credit, but never pay any interest. I agree.
Most people though, don't have that self-control in practice. Did you look up the average interest-bearing credit-card-debt of american households anytime recently ?
Yeah. I agree. People who insist on behaving like children, should rather have the bank hold their hand.
Here's a hint: many adult human beings are perfectly capable of realizing that just because they -can- max out the credit-line, doesn't mean it's a wise thing to do.
But by all means, if you're happy with paying 10% rather than 3%, for the benefit of being held in the hand by the bank, rather than treated as an adult human being, then more power to you. (and more money to the bank !)
The count isn't the problem.
The problem is that only apps which Apple, at their sole discretion, likes, are allowed. They can, and have, arbitrarily change the rules whenever they feel like it.
For example, they currently decided they do not like any app which has any kind of scantily clad people in it. Just like that. A month ago, those where numerous, now, they're nil.
This is particularily relevant for apps which benefit the consumer, but lead to lower income for apple and/or the carriers. Also for apps which are in any sense controversial.
USA is insane. I mean, the entire cheque-thing ? Hello ? As if it's not ridicolous to begin with, do you send email by handwriting it on paper, then taking a PHOTO of the letter, and sending that to your friend ? No ? Then why is doing the same thing with cheques reasonable ?
I pay my credit, exactly like you do, it's an account like any other, with the exception that the saldo is generally negative other than positive, and so I pay, rather than get, interest.
But differently from yours, mine really -is- an account like any other, meaning I can transfer money into that account, or out of it. Yes, this means if my credit is at -1000 and I transfer and additional 100 out of it, I now owe 1100. What a concept !
Oh, and what's up with paying huge interest-rates on a "credit card" when most people have a much cheaper line of credit backed by their house anyways ? How does it make sense to borrow from the credit-card-company and pay 10% interest or something, when mortgage-rates are a third that ?
I've only -got- one line of credit. It's secured with the house. There's a limit at 75% of fair market value, and the interest is like 3%. (i.e. what people generally pay for a mortgage here at the moment)
Cheques ? Yeah, my grandmother used to have those, when I was real tiny. Like in the 70ies. They where obsolete even then, frankly, but some older folks where still using them.
US banks should get with the program. Being able to take a -photo- of a cheque and mail it to your bank is something only Rube Goldberg would've been proud of.
Making it DLC, rather than part of the main-deal has two consequences, both of which are negative for the consumer, but good for the greedy developer.
First, offcourse, it might entice some to in essence buy a $60+5 game, whereas the same people might have balked at just calling it a $65 game to begin with.
Second, however, DLC hurts the second-hand market. If the game was $5 more, but this content was included, it'd have been included on resale too. But this way, the value of that fraction of the game that you can resell, is lower.
Dragon Age Origins had the same bullshit; codes for DLC included with the original game. That content could just as well just have been included on the disc, but if it was, you could've resold the entire game, including that content, now you can still resell the game itself, but the buyer will be missing those pieces (or will need to pay to download them)
But you can't detect latency, because the programs view of EVERYTHING, including the system-clock, is subject to the whims of whoever is running in ring-0.
i.e. you cannot detect that you've been virtualised and are running in a simulation, as opposed to on the bare metal, by looking at a clock, because the clock itself will be virtualised too.
Almost true, I guess.
But users also care about: Are there many cool apps ? Can I get a app to look at porn ?
Or put more bluntly; can apps exist, that the producer of the phone don't like ?
It's always a officer of the same sex as the one being investigated.
Always wondered what would happen if you turned your gayness to the stratosphere and loudly proclaimed your enthusiasm at being patted down by the /gorgeous/ young man over there.
Yeah. But good luck with that. Even average people have dozens, or sometimes even hundreds of objects on or with them, do you want to spend hours checking each of them ? Sure -if- you're already suspicious of someone, you perform a more thorough check, but you can't do that to everyone, or even a significant fraction. (though I've never once in my life experienced a check that would've found such a coin)
Free and open markets are "better" than state-controlled planned economies.
For roughly the same reason, a platform where anyone can freely make available any application they wish, is "better" than one where the ecosystem is controlled by a single player.
Your argument is invalid, even if the iphone came with the *possibility* of getting software from any source you choose, you could still *choose* to use only apps from Apples appstore. You're arguing that it's in your advantage to be -forced- to make that choice. And that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, frankly.
Nah. Seriously not. It's true that the average cost of funerals has risen with standard of living. That makes perfect sense, because the benefit of a nicer funeral is the same whereas the cost is less and less.
Put more simply, if a nicer funeral would cost a years salary, and you where living on the bare essentials, you'd make do without, whereas if the same nicer funeral would cost you a weeks salary, and could be covered by shortening your bahamas-vacation from 14 to 10 days, you might do it.
Giving people $15K makes them sligthly richer, agreed. It's completely unreasonably however, to suppose they'd want to spend 100% of this increased richness for funerals. Why would they ?
Yes, generally if people have more money, they'll spend more for everything, including funerals. Someone who is richer will have a tendency to have a sligthly more expensive house, a sligthly more expensive car, a sligthly more expensive vacation, and yes, a sligthly more expensive funeral. No argument with that.
But you seemed to be saying that additional money would get distributed 100% to funerals, 0% to all other spendings. I don't see any rationale for that at all.