Only two - either they see no profit in it or they are utilizing it as a lock in device.
If and when they do (but you said you can already export, so not sure what you are asking) will you really believe?
Export is close to useless. Export is what you use when you are changing applications and never plan to return or when you are backing up data. You pretty much never do it more than once, usually the first time you use an application unless you are particularly masochistic.
Along with most of the world I use multiple applications which utilize an address book. Email, social networking, cell phone, calendar, etc. I want them to continuously and in (near) real time synchronize and/or pull from the same database. Yet nearly every application (online or offline) makes it nearly impossible to keep a single cohesive set of addresses. Why? Primarily because it is a way to make it harder to switch applications. There is no immediate profit in making the user data useful outside the application so they don't bother.
Right now between my cell phone, my email clients (yes plural), the two social networking sites I use and other applications I have roughly 4-6 contact databases depending on how you look at them. This is insane and quite limiting.
Being salary means you're paid to do a job and spend >= 40 hours a week at work.
Not necessarily. The first part is right but the hours is entirely up to the company and employee to negotiate. Some employers MIGHT want you there for >= 40 hours but others don't care at all as long as you get your assigned tasks done. My wife has a salaried job but she only puts in 20-30 hours per week because that's all the work there is. Nothing would be gained by her continued presence in the office and her employers know that. A salary just means you get paid a fixed amount regardless of the number of hours worked.
His abilities were discussed, but a description of the actual violence was relatively rare.
Perhaps because descriptions of fights in books are almost invariably boring, inadequate and contribute little to nothing towards advancing the plot of the story. It's rather like reading a description of a dance. I don't care how good you are with prose, you're never going to capture the beauty and grace of the movement satisfactorily, so what is the point of trying? Good authors know this and so they don't waste a lot of time trying to describe fight scenes in minute detail
It is probably because they don't want some malicious third party developer to trick you into allowing access and then deleting all of your contacts.
Ha! What if some third party developer were to trick me into using an email application and then deleting all my emails? Oh wait, somehow I managed to use well respected third party applications with Gmail without any problems. Yet somehow I can't synchronize my contacts with my other address books... hmmm
Paranoid much? Ever hear of something called BACKING UP your data?
Also, if a developer makes a syncing contacts application, what if it has a bug that screws up all of your contacts?
Only a fool doesn't make backups. If you don't bother to back your data up you deserve the problems. I'm pretty sure the clever folks at Google can provide some means of allowing backups and even rollbacks of user data.
Google wants lock in like everyone else
on
Google About Openness
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in.
I'd be more inclined to believe this if they did things like make the address book for Gmail easily accessible and easy to update and manage by third party applications. Yeah, you can export it and there are a few third party ways to do it but realistically your ability to synchronize contacts outside of Gmail is limited at best. I realize the reasons why they haven't done this but saying you want open standards without actually making the user data (the one thing I actually care about) open and accessible is disingenuous to me.
Who's going to watch a video review, much less a 70 minute one? Write it up on a web page with some illustrative clips.
I did. It's actually funny as hell as well as pretty insightful. If you actually watch it you'd understand that there are some points that are a LOT easier to make with a video. It also has more impact when you see Darth Lucas himself actually saying things that matter in the context of the argument about why the movie sucks.
I'm not sure why there's this trend to having high bandwidth video for stuff that the simple written word can handle.
Because there are some things that video can do that text can't and vice-versa. Sure it can be misused but that isn't an argument against the format.
Those three points violate rule #1 of sci-fi action for kids - Marketability outweighs quality.
Marketability is made much easier by having a good product.
Older Skywalker (Lets get him in his late teens)
Younger kids identify more and are responsible (indirectly) for many more toy sales.
I've got a box full of the original Star Wars action figures that says the age of the kid has little to do with marketability. Furthermore, none of the other Star Wars movies featured a child so prominently and somehow they still managed to sell a galactic ass-load of merchandise.
No JarJar and/or no C3PO and R2D2 (way to many comedy characters)
Action figures.
See previous response.
No Pod-Racing... 20 minutes about 1/3 of the movie about nothing.
Video games.
You don't need pod racing to do a video game. Even if you do want to make it a video game you don't need 25 minutes of it where the plot advances nowhere and we have bad dialog and worse acting by the kid playing Anakin. They could have shown pod racing in about 2-5 minutes and you'd have your video game AND a better movie.
Not stopping there, there is at least one major study that shows no significant link between cellphones and cancer -- not just a lack of any confirmation.
Science can't prove a negative. Science can only conclusive disprove hypothesis, never conclusively prove them. We cannot ever really prove that cell phones do not cause cancer, we can only find that there is no evidence whatsoever to support the theory that they do cause cancer. Furthermore when we say "no significant link" we are usually talking about correlation, not causation - and the distinction is important. To my knowledge there has been no "smoking gun" proof that there is any link between cell phone use and cancer. There have been some correlation studies hinting at a link but the problem has so many factors it is really hard to isolate all the variables. This is not to say that testing to see if there is a link is a bad idea, but big studies like the one you mention seem to indicate no connection which is about the best we really can hope for. Ideally we would have some physics/biochemistry model that could corroborate the (lack of) findings but I don't know if such a model exists. What little I do know about the physics involved seems to indicate at most a minimal risk but others would know better than me.
While we cannot prove a scientific theory we can be highly confident of a hypothesis based on collected evidence. For example we cannot ever conclusively prove that the theory of quantum mechanics is correct but we have a huge amount of evidence supporting the theory and nothing yet to contradict those findings within the limitations of the mathematical model. Conversely in this case some have proposed that cell phones might cause cancer but there so far is little evidence to support the theory despite numerous studies and no theoretical model I'm aware of either that would indicate a serious danger. Hence the rational view is that there cell phone usage is unlikely to be a risk factor for cancer.
These are raw $, not adjusted for inflation from a site i looked up a few weeks a go that summarized prices for milk, bread, cars, housing, salaries, and a basket of other things.
The numbers you need to look at are the CPI tables which is the most common benchmark for inflation. (there are others but the CPI is used the most, despite some weaknesses) On average the cost of a basket of goods rises about 2-3% in a typical year in the US. Sometimes more, sometimes less but usually inflation is somewhere near 2-3%.
What they showed was that from 1940-1980's, every 10 years, everything doubled (wages AND cars AND bread).
Sounds about right but that's normal inflation and wages have mostly kept pace during that period. Some stagnation in places.
Starting in 1990, prices continued to double, but wages only rose 50% per 10 years.
So you are comparing data from the 1940-80s with data from the 1990s onward. I think you need to be very careful about what data you are using and what you are comparing. If costs actually outstripped wage increases by double (which is less than you originally claimed) for the last 20 years we would be in FAR worse shape than we actually are. I've seen a LOT of data on the US macroeconomic picture and nothing I've seen supports what you are saying. Citations please - and it needs to be from someplace like the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, not some political blog.
Quite right. Brain fart on my part. He's an O-4 which in the Navy is Lt Cmdr. Most of the military guys I know are in the other branches so I transposed...
With prices up 200-400% and wages up 50%, I have to be selective.
What country are you living in? Unless you are talking about a time span of decades it certainly isn't the USA. In fact in 2009 the CPI fell for the first time since 1955. Wages certainly aren't up 50% on a nominal or real basis unless you are talking about a decades long trend - and on a real basis they have arguably fallen.
The military is plenty happy to accept those that aren't all that bright as low level grunts.
They take them because they have a manpower quota to fill. However all things being equal the military would prefer soldiers who are more intelligent over those who are less so. Smart soldiers are easier to train, can tackle more difficult problems, report back better information, and give you an advantage over less intelligent opponents. As long as they still follow orders, a smarter soldier is generally a better soldier.
Problem is that when you need that many people, not all of them are going to be above average and as you pointed out, some jobs require less thinking than others. The military makes them take IQ tests and those that aren't so bright aren't given the thought heavy jobs.
Not to be harsh about it, but think back to high school and college and ask yourself if you would describe the people who were planning military careers as the "best and brightest" of your class.
Ahh, you are thinking of the one or two guys who were all gung ho but not especially bright and had delusions about being a badass commando. Yeah, my school had some too. See the thing is though that those guys aren't the guys running the military. The guys you are thinking of end up as infantry grunts or something similar and exit the service after a few years. I have a cousin who is one of those guys. Smart but classic ADHD and socially stunted and not someone I'd trust right now to be in charge of anything. But he served two tours in Iraq and now he's in college so I have hope for him.
The guys in the officer corps (commissioned and higher level NCO) are almost invariably bright and hard working and most of them that I've ever met didn't talk much about their interest in the military. I have a classmate who is a major in the US Navy who never gave the slightest hint he was interested in a military career. He was quiet, very smart, and I would have guessed he'd be an engineer but instead he's become a heck of a good officer. I have a number of friends who were graduates of West Point and Annapolis and I've been impressed as hell by each one of them. Smart, incredibly disciplined, and I'd hire any one of them in a heartbeat.
The US military is an incredibly complicated and large organization with huge budgets, difficult goals, and a huge workforce. If you think managing all that is easy and doesn't require tremendous skill, you are delusional. Sure they make mistakes just like any other large organization but their mission is also more complicated than most and if they fail, people die.
Judges do not make the laws, they simply settle disputes with laws already made.
Judges don't make statutory laws but they do make case law which is just as important. Even the best statutory laws need interpretation. Our judicial system provides that interpretation. Occasionally judges (usually the State & Federal Supreme Courts) strike down laws that are incompatible with the existing legal system or interpret them in ways that change the legal system - hopefully for the better. With apologies to Martha Stewart, this is a Good Thing (tm).
It would be a gross violation of their judicial power were they to legislate from the bench ( which many attempt anyway ).
So you would prefer that Jim Crow laws had remained constitutional? Without judicial interpretation they would have remained the law of the land for much longer than they actually did. Laws are not always fair and the interpretation of them matters. Judges having the ability to interpret laws and occasionally striking them down is something you should be grateful to have - at least in the long run. Saying that judges shouldn't interpret laws belies an immense ignorance of how our legal system actually works. What you are really arguing for is a weak judiciary and a strong legislature. I prefer they be relatively balanced in power.
Regardless, if you want to know why this particular area houses so many of these types of disputes, follow the money. They wouldn't do it if they weren't benefiting financially somehow.
The cases are housed there because the US District Court in that location have the judicial experience and infrastructure to handle these cases better than almost anywhere else except maybe Central California and the Texas court has a reputation for plaintiff friendly juries and rules for fast trial proceedings.
that's where the theory of capitalism fail, if every laptop owner know that it has been ripped of money for nothing in return than, maybe, market would work (and low the price),
Your logic is flawed. If the laptop buyer is offered a price and agrees to it (absent coercion) the laptop buyer has de-facto decided that the value of the product being offered was a fair compensation for the money tendered. A fair deal is one that both parties are willing to agree to - this is the definition EVERY economist you're likely to ever meet uses.
Furthermore not every laptop buyer wants the same things so their willingness to pay is going to be different. There are some products that sell for prices far beyond what I'd be willing to pay for them and that's ok. The fact that we might pay different prices for the same thing is ok in general because odds are the product is worth different amounts to the two of us. Every time you go into a store and decide to buy or not buy something, you are conducting a negotiation. If too few people are purchasing something at a given price, the price will eventually be lowered. This is how markets work. Sellers adjust prices to match buyer's willingness to pay but the only way to get that information is to offer a price and see if the buyer is interested.
The biggest flaw in your logic however appears when you turn your logic around. If you don't pay as much as possible for your purchases aren't you "ripping off" the sellers who worked hard to provide you that product?
but the main component that influence the market today are publicity and obfuscation of real characteristics and flaws of product not informed comparison of products, where intelligent and informed people could decide if they want more reliable, more durable or cheaper product of a certain kind and, buying it, influence the market production.
Nonsense. There is more information available about products today then there ever has been. I'm guessing you've never tried to sell very much because marketplaces are ruthlessly efficient at adjusting prices to match buyers with sellers. Collectively people are extremely good at deciding what sort of products they want and influencing the market. Individually being informed about your purchases is YOUR responsibility. If you choose to not inform yourself, that is your fault and no one else's. I can't decide for your what you want in a product or what your are willing to pay for it. Only you can decide that.
But charging more for something just because the consumer is willing to pay more for it... I guess that crosses the ethical line for me.
Why? If you offer me a price on something and I agree to it, we both have decided that it is a fair deal. If it wasn't fair then why would I agree to the deal? The seller's goal is to charge as much as possible and the buyer's goal is to pay as little as possible and they generally meet somewhere in the middle. Absent some form of coercion there is no ethical line that has been crossed. If someone asks a price that is more than you are willing to pay you generally have the right to walk away from the deal. The definition of a fair deal is one that both parties are willing to agree to. If it wasn't "fair" in your mind, don't agree to the deal.
That's not supply and demand, it's not because it's any better than the other, it's not because its more expensive to make. You're just doing it because you can, and I call that greed.
Turn your argument around. If I try to sell you something why don't you pay me as much as possible? By your logic, if you don't pay me as much as you possibly can for what I'm selling you are being greedy. See? It works both ways which is why your logic doesn't make any sense. You are uncomfortable with the idea that someone might be taking advantage of you but you don't seem to see that you are doing the same thing to them in reverse. Moreover you are presuming that your discomfort means there is some ethical dilemma in play here when there isn't. I'm guessing you don't enjoy negotiating but you do it every day whether you realize it or not. If you decide to not buy something because the price was "too high" in your mind, you are negotiating by your actions. I suppose you can call it greed but you are guilty of the same thing you are accusing the seller of.
Getting a fair deal is YOUR responsibility. If you are interested in buying or selling something, it is up to YOU to decide what it is worth to YOU. This may involve research and effort on your part. No one else can do that for you even if they wanted to. I have no earthly idea what the maximum or minimum price you would be willing to pay for an iPhone is unless we negotiate. There is no ethical issue in play. It simply is a negotiation.
In a capitalist system there are no barriers between markets, there's no such thing as a "market segment".
Capitalism has NOTHING to do with the definition of a market segment. You can have a market segment in a planned economy too. Market segments are simply a way to identify a group with similar needs and/or interests. If you don't know who the customer is and what their needs are, you are going to have a very hard time providing a product that customer will be interested in.
Segments are created artificially to line companies' pockets.
WRONG, segments are identified to understand who will be interested in a particular product. By your definition anything that contributes to understanding the needs of customers is "artificially" lining company's pockets - whatever the hell that means.
In fact... most laptop manufacturers artificially design their laptops and batteries so that a generic battery from someone else cannot be plugged in.
That is an effort to differentiate their product so that they can compete on some basis other than simply price. Sometimes this is a good thing as a differentiated product can potentially serve the needs of a group of customers better. For instance my cell phone has a removable battery but I never remove it so this feature is useless to me. My cell phone could instead be designed to eliminate the extra bulk needed to make it removable and this would serve my needs better. If my phone were instead powered by a standard AAA cell (which would not perform as well and be bulkier) that would eliminate a potential differentiator but it also would likely degrade the performance of the product in the ways that matter to me.
Batteries have different performance levels, weight and charging considerations that make a standard battery problematic in applications like laptops and cell phones. Eventually they may standardize but right now any battery choice carries engineering trade-offs that can make or break the product. A laptop manufacturer would be stupid to try to standardize their batteries any more than they have to right now. Conversely, power supplies in desktop machines are generally not a useful way to differentiate the product for most consumers and as a result they are highly standard and generally produced as cheaply as possible.
It's not about competing technologies it's about many producers trying to sell the most units.
Wrong again. If their goal was to maximize unit sales (instead of profits) they would WANT standardized batteries. This would make the product a commodity (undifferentiated) which would generally result in larger unit sales. You cannot charge as much for an undifferentiated product and you cannot generally expect more than minimal profits. Companies generally try to avoid having undifferentiated products because the profits inevitably go to the lowest cost producer in the long run. This is why computer companies, cellular providers and many other technology based companies try to compete on any basis other than simply price.
I always thought the regular minis were pretty cool looking, but I've never had a chance to sit down in one and see what they feel like on the road.
They're ok to drive. Not going to blow anyone away in a race but handling and acceleration are acceptable. The S version is reasonably peppy. They're a fun car for 1-2 people. Not overly practical for hauling stuff but that's not the point of the Mini.
As far as all electrical or even hybrid vehicles all my experiences with them tell me a few things, they don't have the same sort of get up and go power to them that a regular vehicle has in most cases and they are terribly expensive to repair.
That's because most currently sold hybrids are tuned for fuel efficiency rather than performance. That is a design decision made by the engineers. The Tesla Roadster is quite fast and fun to drive. It's very possible to tune an electric or hybrid for performance rather than fuel economy. The Prius is pretty gutless but the point of it is not performance. You can have performance or you can have fuel economy but you can't maximize both at the same time.
Good for the 'environment' or not I don't imagine I'll be moving trading my Tundra in for an alternate fuel source vehicle any time soon.
Perhaps not but you might consider the Chevy Silverado Hybrid. I am happy with my Honda Ridgeline but would happily trade it in for an equivalently powered diesel or hybrid version with better fuel economy.
Especially not the Prius, those things are just terrible.
You'd better qualify that statement. You may not care for it but a Prius is a fine vehicle if you need something efficient to commute in. I've driven them myself (my sister owns one) and they do that job wonderfully well. No they won't win any races but that not the point. They have more than enough power to get you to your destination on pretty much any paved road most of us are likely to drive on. If you need a truck to haul stuff, then a Prius probably is a poor choice. I certainly wouldn't use one as my work vehicle but I would use one for commuting in a heartbeat.
Don't generalize what a small (but admittedly vocal) group says.
I don't have to because the groups I'm talking about aren't small. Far from it in fact. 52% of Americans say they would not vote for a well qualified atheist for president. When asked the question "I would disapprove if my child wanted to marry a member of this group," atheists led the parade of disapproval with 41% disapproving. (followed by muslims with 34% and blacks with 27%)
It's not even remotely difficult to find examples of discrimination, hatred and violence between religious groups either. Ask the jews if they feel accepted by those of other faiths sometime. The US Constitution had to explicitly outlaw religious discrimination and bar Congress specifically from making laws regarding specific religions precisely because the known inability of religious groups to be quietly tolerant of each others faiths. I'm not even remotely talking about tiny little pockets of intolerance - I'm talking about widespread institutionalized intolerance that on too frequent occasions even becomes hatred or even violence.
Personally, I would never criticize someone solely on their personal religious belief.
I wouldn't either but mostly because I don't really care what crazy mythology someone subscribes to so long as they don't cause me any trouble. Like you I start to have a problem with religions when their members decide that I need to join them in their irrational beliefs. If all religious believes did was to worship quietly and gently in private, I might think the members odd but I'd be generally supportive or at worst indifferent to their beliefs. Many of my friends and family who are religious fit exactly this description - I'm sure you know people too who are "faithful" but welcoming of others who aren't.
Unfortunately it doesn't work that way FAR too often. Religions as institutions aggressively try to spread their membership, they castigate (directly or indirectly) those who aren't members, and they brainwash (there is no other word for it) people and worst of all children into their irrational dogma. I don't really want freedom OF religion, I want freedom FROM religion.
Yes, there are groups of insane Christians/Buddhists/Muslims/Atheists, but you don't get to generalize to all members of those (lack of)? belief systems.
Actually yes I do get to generalize because otherwise it's impossible to point out that SOME people are intolerant towards others who do not share their exact belief. The only other way to do it is to point out the (numerous) specific examples of that intolerance and I'm pretty sure you can look those up yourself. If it were some rare occurrence I might concede the point but it happens EVERY DAY in every country around the world. Not just here and there in rare circumstances.
I don't think you can really give a group "cult" status when there's no penalty for leaving and they're still nice to you afterward.
Except that they often aren't nice to those who do not share their religion. Think about how many wars have been started over religion. There have been polls that clearly show that the most hated "religion" in the US is atheism - much more so than islam. I've seen with my own eyes discrimination and even brutality against those who are of a different religion. There are copious recent examples of muslims being assaulted and castigated even though they have no association besides their faith with a group of terrorists.
Your mom is nice but don't be lulled into thinking that everyone feels the same way. There are places in this world I would be killed if I said I did not believe in a god at the wrong time. The only difference between a religion and a cult is how accepted it is in society.
That's a very poor argument. You can swap out "church" for almost any other childhood activity. For example, soccer:
I'm not aware of any soccer team that claims to know how the universe was founded, what the afterlife is like, demands worship of deities and threatens eternal punishment for not following their rules. I'm not aware of any soccer team that has tortured and killed those who play other sports and refused to play soccer. I'm not aware of any soccer team that claims their coach rose from the dead and absolved them of their sins. I'm not aware of any soccer team that claims their coach performs supernatural acts. I'm not aware of any soccer team that regards you as an immoral person because you don't share their mythology.
In short, there is a HUGE difference between religion and most other childhood activities.
Not really. In the United States the DATA in your medical record belongs to you. The physical medium on which the record is stored belongs to the entity responsible for maintaining that record. A close analogy is that you own the copyright but they own the physical copy. You have a right to inspect your medical record and petition your health care provider to correct factually incorrect data.
In the United Kingdom NHS medical records belong to the Department of Health.
This isn't actually true. Most countries will permit a ship to hold weapons while in port, as long as they are stored securely and are legal in the ship's flag country. See the useful summary here [mast-yacht.com].
There are exceptions. Like anything in maritime law it's complicated. In fairness, saying a firearm is always illegal in port is not necessarily true but it may be. Once the vessel itself is armed (deck mounted guns etc) then it is effectively a warship and the laws seem to get weird. The general consensus right now seems to be that by and large make the carrying of weaponry in territorial waters impractical at best under present law. Depending on the ship's flag, its destination port and the relevant maritime law, firearms may be illegal aboard ships. Many of the laws prohibiting weapons are apparently very old laws. Also many of the rules really are firearm importation rules which vary greatly from country to country.
The article you cite also is only discussing yachts, not commercial vessels. Bear in mind too that the legal framework in the article you mention is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which has been signed but NOT ratified by the United States.
Slashdot Mirror
What are the reasons they haven't done it?
Only two - either they see no profit in it or they are utilizing it as a lock in device.
If and when they do (but you said you can already export, so not sure what you are asking) will you really believe?
Export is close to useless. Export is what you use when you are changing applications and never plan to return or when you are backing up data. You pretty much never do it more than once, usually the first time you use an application unless you are particularly masochistic.
Along with most of the world I use multiple applications which utilize an address book. Email, social networking, cell phone, calendar, etc. I want them to continuously and in (near) real time synchronize and/or pull from the same database. Yet nearly every application (online or offline) makes it nearly impossible to keep a single cohesive set of addresses. Why? Primarily because it is a way to make it harder to switch applications. There is no immediate profit in making the user data useful outside the application so they don't bother.
Right now between my cell phone, my email clients (yes plural), the two social networking sites I use and other applications I have roughly 4-6 contact databases depending on how you look at them. This is insane and quite limiting.
Being salary means you're paid to do a job and spend >= 40 hours a week at work.
Not necessarily. The first part is right but the hours is entirely up to the company and employee to negotiate. Some employers MIGHT want you there for >= 40 hours but others don't care at all as long as you get your assigned tasks done. My wife has a salaried job but she only puts in 20-30 hours per week because that's all the work there is. Nothing would be gained by her continued presence in the office and her employers know that. A salary just means you get paid a fixed amount regardless of the number of hours worked.
His abilities were discussed, but a description of the actual violence was relatively rare.
Perhaps because descriptions of fights in books are almost invariably boring, inadequate and contribute little to nothing towards advancing the plot of the story. It's rather like reading a description of a dance. I don't care how good you are with prose, you're never going to capture the beauty and grace of the movement satisfactorily, so what is the point of trying? Good authors know this and so they don't waste a lot of time trying to describe fight scenes in minute detail
It is probably because they don't want some malicious third party developer to trick you into allowing access and then deleting all of your contacts.
Ha! What if some third party developer were to trick me into using an email application and then deleting all my emails? Oh wait, somehow I managed to use well respected third party applications with Gmail without any problems. Yet somehow I can't synchronize my contacts with my other address books... hmmm
Paranoid much? Ever hear of something called BACKING UP your data?
Also, if a developer makes a syncing contacts application, what if it has a bug that screws up all of your contacts?
Only a fool doesn't make backups. If you don't bother to back your data up you deserve the problems. I'm pretty sure the clever folks at Google can provide some means of allowing backups and even rollbacks of user data.
Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in.
I'd be more inclined to believe this if they did things like make the address book for Gmail easily accessible and easy to update and manage by third party applications. Yeah, you can export it and there are a few third party ways to do it but realistically your ability to synchronize contacts outside of Gmail is limited at best. I realize the reasons why they haven't done this but saying you want open standards without actually making the user data (the one thing I actually care about) open and accessible is disingenuous to me.
Who's going to watch a video review, much less a 70 minute one? Write it up on a web page with some illustrative clips.
I did. It's actually funny as hell as well as pretty insightful. If you actually watch it you'd understand that there are some points that are a LOT easier to make with a video. It also has more impact when you see Darth Lucas himself actually saying things that matter in the context of the argument about why the movie sucks.
I'm not sure why there's this trend to having high bandwidth video for stuff that the simple written word can handle.
Because there are some things that video can do that text can't and vice-versa. Sure it can be misused but that isn't an argument against the format.
Those three points violate rule #1 of sci-fi action for kids - Marketability outweighs quality.
Marketability is made much easier by having a good product.
Older Skywalker (Lets get him in his late teens)
Younger kids identify more and are responsible (indirectly) for many more toy sales.
I've got a box full of the original Star Wars action figures that says the age of the kid has little to do with marketability. Furthermore, none of the other Star Wars movies featured a child so prominently and somehow they still managed to sell a galactic ass-load of merchandise.
No JarJar and/or no C3PO and R2D2 (way to many comedy characters)
Action figures.
See previous response.
No Pod-Racing... 20 minutes about 1/3 of the movie about nothing.
Video games.
You don't need pod racing to do a video game. Even if you do want to make it a video game you don't need 25 minutes of it where the plot advances nowhere and we have bad dialog and worse acting by the kid playing Anakin. They could have shown pod racing in about 2-5 minutes and you'd have your video game AND a better movie.
Not stopping there, there is at least one major study that shows no significant link between cellphones and cancer -- not just a lack of any confirmation.
Science can't prove a negative. Science can only conclusive disprove hypothesis, never conclusively prove them. We cannot ever really prove that cell phones do not cause cancer, we can only find that there is no evidence whatsoever to support the theory that they do cause cancer. Furthermore when we say "no significant link" we are usually talking about correlation, not causation - and the distinction is important. To my knowledge there has been no "smoking gun" proof that there is any link between cell phone use and cancer. There have been some correlation studies hinting at a link but the problem has so many factors it is really hard to isolate all the variables. This is not to say that testing to see if there is a link is a bad idea, but big studies like the one you mention seem to indicate no connection which is about the best we really can hope for. Ideally we would have some physics/biochemistry model that could corroborate the (lack of) findings but I don't know if such a model exists. What little I do know about the physics involved seems to indicate at most a minimal risk but others would know better than me.
While we cannot prove a scientific theory we can be highly confident of a hypothesis based on collected evidence. For example we cannot ever conclusively prove that the theory of quantum mechanics is correct but we have a huge amount of evidence supporting the theory and nothing yet to contradict those findings within the limitations of the mathematical model. Conversely in this case some have proposed that cell phones might cause cancer but there so far is little evidence to support the theory despite numerous studies and no theoretical model I'm aware of either that would indicate a serious danger. Hence the rational view is that there cell phone usage is unlikely to be a risk factor for cancer.
These are raw $, not adjusted for inflation from a site i looked up a few weeks a go that summarized prices for milk, bread, cars, housing, salaries, and a basket of other things.
The numbers you need to look at are the CPI tables which is the most common benchmark for inflation. (there are others but the CPI is used the most, despite some weaknesses) On average the cost of a basket of goods rises about 2-3% in a typical year in the US. Sometimes more, sometimes less but usually inflation is somewhere near 2-3%.
What they showed was that from 1940-1980's, every 10 years, everything doubled (wages AND cars AND bread).
Sounds about right but that's normal inflation and wages have mostly kept pace during that period. Some stagnation in places.
Starting in 1990, prices continued to double, but wages only rose 50% per 10 years.
So you are comparing data from the 1940-80s with data from the 1990s onward. I think you need to be very careful about what data you are using and what you are comparing. If costs actually outstripped wage increases by double (which is less than you originally claimed) for the last 20 years we would be in FAR worse shape than we actually are. I've seen a LOT of data on the US macroeconomic picture and nothing I've seen supports what you are saying. Citations please - and it needs to be from someplace like the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, not some political blog.
The Navy does not have a rank called Major.
Quite right. Brain fart on my part. He's an O-4 which in the Navy is Lt Cmdr. Most of the military guys I know are in the other branches so I transposed...
With prices up 200-400% and wages up 50%, I have to be selective.
What country are you living in? Unless you are talking about a time span of decades it certainly isn't the USA. In fact in 2009 the CPI fell for the first time since 1955. Wages certainly aren't up 50% on a nominal or real basis unless you are talking about a decades long trend - and on a real basis they have arguably fallen.
He is a major... in the US Navy... hmm.
Yeah, brainfart on my part. He's an O4. Same rank, different name. Most of my friends in the service are in the other branches so I transposed...
The military is plenty happy to accept those that aren't all that bright as low level grunts.
They take them because they have a manpower quota to fill. However all things being equal the military would prefer soldiers who are more intelligent over those who are less so. Smart soldiers are easier to train, can tackle more difficult problems, report back better information, and give you an advantage over less intelligent opponents. As long as they still follow orders, a smarter soldier is generally a better soldier.
Problem is that when you need that many people, not all of them are going to be above average and as you pointed out, some jobs require less thinking than others. The military makes them take IQ tests and those that aren't so bright aren't given the thought heavy jobs.
Not to be harsh about it, but think back to high school and college and ask yourself if you would describe the people who were planning military careers as the "best and brightest" of your class.
Ahh, you are thinking of the one or two guys who were all gung ho but not especially bright and had delusions about being a badass commando. Yeah, my school had some too. See the thing is though that those guys aren't the guys running the military. The guys you are thinking of end up as infantry grunts or something similar and exit the service after a few years. I have a cousin who is one of those guys. Smart but classic ADHD and socially stunted and not someone I'd trust right now to be in charge of anything. But he served two tours in Iraq and now he's in college so I have hope for him.
The guys in the officer corps (commissioned and higher level NCO) are almost invariably bright and hard working and most of them that I've ever met didn't talk much about their interest in the military. I have a classmate who is a major in the US Navy who never gave the slightest hint he was interested in a military career. He was quiet, very smart, and I would have guessed he'd be an engineer but instead he's become a heck of a good officer. I have a number of friends who were graduates of West Point and Annapolis and I've been impressed as hell by each one of them. Smart, incredibly disciplined, and I'd hire any one of them in a heartbeat.
The US military is an incredibly complicated and large organization with huge budgets, difficult goals, and a huge workforce. If you think managing all that is easy and doesn't require tremendous skill, you are delusional. Sure they make mistakes just like any other large organization but their mission is also more complicated than most and if they fail, people die.
Judges do not make the laws, they simply settle disputes with laws already made.
Judges don't make statutory laws but they do make case law which is just as important. Even the best statutory laws need interpretation. Our judicial system provides that interpretation. Occasionally judges (usually the State & Federal Supreme Courts) strike down laws that are incompatible with the existing legal system or interpret them in ways that change the legal system - hopefully for the better. With apologies to Martha Stewart, this is a Good Thing (tm).
It would be a gross violation of their judicial power were they to legislate from the bench ( which many attempt anyway ).
So you would prefer that Jim Crow laws had remained constitutional? Without judicial interpretation they would have remained the law of the land for much longer than they actually did. Laws are not always fair and the interpretation of them matters. Judges having the ability to interpret laws and occasionally striking them down is something you should be grateful to have - at least in the long run. Saying that judges shouldn't interpret laws belies an immense ignorance of how our legal system actually works. What you are really arguing for is a weak judiciary and a strong legislature. I prefer they be relatively balanced in power.
Regardless, if you want to know why this particular area houses so many of these types of disputes, follow the money. They wouldn't do it if they weren't benefiting financially somehow.
The cases are housed there because the US District Court in that location have the judicial experience and infrastructure to handle these cases better than almost anywhere else except maybe Central California and the Texas court has a reputation for plaintiff friendly juries and rules for fast trial proceedings.
that's where the theory of capitalism fail, if every laptop owner know that it has been ripped of money for nothing in return
than, maybe, market would work (and low the price),
Your logic is flawed. If the laptop buyer is offered a price and agrees to it (absent coercion) the laptop buyer has de-facto decided that the value of the product being offered was a fair compensation for the money tendered. A fair deal is one that both parties are willing to agree to - this is the definition EVERY economist you're likely to ever meet uses.
Furthermore not every laptop buyer wants the same things so their willingness to pay is going to be different. There are some products that sell for prices far beyond what I'd be willing to pay for them and that's ok. The fact that we might pay different prices for the same thing is ok in general because odds are the product is worth different amounts to the two of us. Every time you go into a store and decide to buy or not buy something, you are conducting a negotiation. If too few people are purchasing something at a given price, the price will eventually be lowered. This is how markets work. Sellers adjust prices to match buyer's willingness to pay but the only way to get that information is to offer a price and see if the buyer is interested.
The biggest flaw in your logic however appears when you turn your logic around. If you don't pay as much as possible for your purchases aren't you "ripping off" the sellers who worked hard to provide you that product?
but the main component that influence the market today are publicity and obfuscation of real characteristics and flaws of product not informed comparison of products, where intelligent and informed people could decide if they want more reliable, more durable or cheaper product of a certain kind and, buying it, influence the market production.
Nonsense. There is more information available about products today then there ever has been. I'm guessing you've never tried to sell very much because marketplaces are ruthlessly efficient at adjusting prices to match buyers with sellers. Collectively people are extremely good at deciding what sort of products they want and influencing the market. Individually being informed about your purchases is YOUR responsibility. If you choose to not inform yourself, that is your fault and no one else's. I can't decide for your what you want in a product or what your are willing to pay for it. Only you can decide that.
But charging more for something just because the consumer is willing to pay more for it... I guess that crosses the ethical line for me.
Why? If you offer me a price on something and I agree to it, we both have decided that it is a fair deal. If it wasn't fair then why would I agree to the deal? The seller's goal is to charge as much as possible and the buyer's goal is to pay as little as possible and they generally meet somewhere in the middle. Absent some form of coercion there is no ethical line that has been crossed. If someone asks a price that is more than you are willing to pay you generally have the right to walk away from the deal. The definition of a fair deal is one that both parties are willing to agree to. If it wasn't "fair" in your mind, don't agree to the deal.
That's not supply and demand, it's not because it's any better than the other, it's not because its more expensive to make. You're just doing it because you can, and I call that greed.
Turn your argument around. If I try to sell you something why don't you pay me as much as possible? By your logic, if you don't pay me as much as you possibly can for what I'm selling you are being greedy. See? It works both ways which is why your logic doesn't make any sense. You are uncomfortable with the idea that someone might be taking advantage of you but you don't seem to see that you are doing the same thing to them in reverse. Moreover you are presuming that your discomfort means there is some ethical dilemma in play here when there isn't. I'm guessing you don't enjoy negotiating but you do it every day whether you realize it or not. If you decide to not buy something because the price was "too high" in your mind, you are negotiating by your actions. I suppose you can call it greed but you are guilty of the same thing you are accusing the seller of.
Getting a fair deal is YOUR responsibility. If you are interested in buying or selling something, it is up to YOU to decide what it is worth to YOU. This may involve research and effort on your part. No one else can do that for you even if they wanted to. I have no earthly idea what the maximum or minimum price you would be willing to pay for an iPhone is unless we negotiate. There is no ethical issue in play. It simply is a negotiation.
Segmenting markets, or creating artificial barriers between markets is not capitalism. It's a monopolistic practice.
You keep using that word. It does not mean what you think it means. Market segments are not "artificial barriers", they are simply observed categories. "A market segment is a group of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product and/or service needs." While it is possible to create a market segment through artificial barriers, this is quite rare and difficult to achieve. Identifying market segments certainly has NOTHING inherently to do with monopolies. Every company uses market segments from the smallest to the largest.
In a capitalist system there are no barriers between markets, there's no such thing as a "market segment".
Capitalism has NOTHING to do with the definition of a market segment. You can have a market segment in a planned economy too. Market segments are simply a way to identify a group with similar needs and/or interests. If you don't know who the customer is and what their needs are, you are going to have a very hard time providing a product that customer will be interested in.
Segments are created artificially to line companies' pockets.
WRONG, segments are identified to understand who will be interested in a particular product. By your definition anything that contributes to understanding the needs of customers is "artificially" lining company's pockets - whatever the hell that means.
In fact... most laptop manufacturers artificially design their laptops and batteries so that a generic battery from someone else cannot be plugged in.
That is an effort to differentiate their product so that they can compete on some basis other than simply price. Sometimes this is a good thing as a differentiated product can potentially serve the needs of a group of customers better. For instance my cell phone has a removable battery but I never remove it so this feature is useless to me. My cell phone could instead be designed to eliminate the extra bulk needed to make it removable and this would serve my needs better. If my phone were instead powered by a standard AAA cell (which would not perform as well and be bulkier) that would eliminate a potential differentiator but it also would likely degrade the performance of the product in the ways that matter to me.
Batteries have different performance levels, weight and charging considerations that make a standard battery problematic in applications like laptops and cell phones. Eventually they may standardize but right now any battery choice carries engineering trade-offs that can make or break the product. A laptop manufacturer would be stupid to try to standardize their batteries any more than they have to right now. Conversely, power supplies in desktop machines are generally not a useful way to differentiate the product for most consumers and as a result they are highly standard and generally produced as cheaply as possible.
It's not about competing technologies it's about many producers trying to sell the most units.
Wrong again. If their goal was to maximize unit sales (instead of profits) they would WANT standardized batteries. This would make the product a commodity (undifferentiated) which would generally result in larger unit sales. You cannot charge as much for an undifferentiated product and you cannot generally expect more than minimal profits. Companies generally try to avoid having undifferentiated products because the profits inevitably go to the lowest cost producer in the long run. This is why computer companies, cellular providers and many other technology based companies try to compete on any basis other than simply price.
I always thought the regular minis were pretty cool looking, but I've never had a chance to sit down in one and see what they feel like on the road.
They're ok to drive. Not going to blow anyone away in a race but handling and acceleration are acceptable. The S version is reasonably peppy. They're a fun car for 1-2 people. Not overly practical for hauling stuff but that's not the point of the Mini.
As far as all electrical or even hybrid vehicles all my experiences with them tell me a few things, they don't have the same sort of get up and go power to them that a regular vehicle has in most cases and they are terribly expensive to repair.
That's because most currently sold hybrids are tuned for fuel efficiency rather than performance. That is a design decision made by the engineers. The Tesla Roadster is quite fast and fun to drive. It's very possible to tune an electric or hybrid for performance rather than fuel economy. The Prius is pretty gutless but the point of it is not performance. You can have performance or you can have fuel economy but you can't maximize both at the same time.
Good for the 'environment' or not I don't imagine I'll be moving trading my Tundra in for an alternate fuel source vehicle any time soon.
Perhaps not but you might consider the Chevy Silverado Hybrid. I am happy with my Honda Ridgeline but would happily trade it in for an equivalently powered diesel or hybrid version with better fuel economy.
Especially not the Prius, those things are just terrible.
You'd better qualify that statement. You may not care for it but a Prius is a fine vehicle if you need something efficient to commute in. I've driven them myself (my sister owns one) and they do that job wonderfully well. No they won't win any races but that not the point. They have more than enough power to get you to your destination on pretty much any paved road most of us are likely to drive on. If you need a truck to haul stuff, then a Prius probably is a poor choice. I certainly wouldn't use one as my work vehicle but I would use one for commuting in a heartbeat.
Don't generalize what a small (but admittedly vocal) group says.
I don't have to because the groups I'm talking about aren't small. Far from it in fact. 52% of Americans say they would not vote for a well qualified atheist for president. When asked the question "I would disapprove if my child wanted to marry a member of this group," atheists led the parade of disapproval with 41% disapproving. (followed by muslims with 34% and blacks with 27%)
It's not even remotely difficult to find examples of discrimination, hatred and violence between religious groups either. Ask the jews if they feel accepted by those of other faiths sometime. The US Constitution had to explicitly outlaw religious discrimination and bar Congress specifically from making laws regarding specific religions precisely because the known inability of religious groups to be quietly tolerant of each others faiths. I'm not even remotely talking about tiny little pockets of intolerance - I'm talking about widespread institutionalized intolerance that on too frequent occasions even becomes hatred or even violence.
Personally, I would never criticize someone solely on their personal religious belief.
I wouldn't either but mostly because I don't really care what crazy mythology someone subscribes to so long as they don't cause me any trouble. Like you I start to have a problem with religions when their members decide that I need to join them in their irrational beliefs. If all religious believes did was to worship quietly and gently in private, I might think the members odd but I'd be generally supportive or at worst indifferent to their beliefs. Many of my friends and family who are religious fit exactly this description - I'm sure you know people too who are "faithful" but welcoming of others who aren't.
Unfortunately it doesn't work that way FAR too often. Religions as institutions aggressively try to spread their membership, they castigate (directly or indirectly) those who aren't members, and they brainwash (there is no other word for it) people and worst of all children into their irrational dogma. I don't really want freedom OF religion, I want freedom FROM religion.
Yes, there are groups of insane Christians/Buddhists/Muslims/Atheists, but you don't get to generalize to all members of those (lack of)? belief systems.
Actually yes I do get to generalize because otherwise it's impossible to point out that SOME people are intolerant towards others who do not share their exact belief. The only other way to do it is to point out the (numerous) specific examples of that intolerance and I'm pretty sure you can look those up yourself. If it were some rare occurrence I might concede the point but it happens EVERY DAY in every country around the world. Not just here and there in rare circumstances.
I don't think you can really give a group "cult" status when there's no penalty for leaving and they're still nice to you afterward.
Except that they often aren't nice to those who do not share their religion. Think about how many wars have been started over religion. There have been polls that clearly show that the most hated "religion" in the US is atheism - much more so than islam. I've seen with my own eyes discrimination and even brutality against those who are of a different religion. There are copious recent examples of muslims being assaulted and castigated even though they have no association besides their faith with a group of terrorists.
Your mom is nice but don't be lulled into thinking that everyone feels the same way. There are places in this world I would be killed if I said I did not believe in a god at the wrong time. The only difference between a religion and a cult is how accepted it is in society.
That's a very poor argument. You can swap out "church" for almost any other childhood activity. For example, soccer:
I'm not aware of any soccer team that claims to know how the universe was founded, what the afterlife is like, demands worship of deities and threatens eternal punishment for not following their rules. I'm not aware of any soccer team that has tortured and killed those who play other sports and refused to play soccer. I'm not aware of any soccer team that claims their coach rose from the dead and absolved them of their sins. I'm not aware of any soccer team that claims their coach performs supernatural acts. I'm not aware of any soccer team that regards you as an immoral person because you don't share their mythology.
In short, there is a HUGE difference between religion and most other childhood activities.
Your records belong to you.
Not really. In the United States the DATA in your medical record belongs to you. The physical medium on which the record is stored belongs to the entity responsible for maintaining that record. A close analogy is that you own the copyright but they own the physical copy. You have a right to inspect your medical record and petition your health care provider to correct factually incorrect data.
In the United Kingdom NHS medical records belong to the Department of Health.
This isn't actually true. Most countries will permit a ship to hold weapons while in port, as long as they are stored securely and are legal in the ship's flag country. See the useful summary here [mast-yacht.com].
There are exceptions. Like anything in maritime law it's complicated. In fairness, saying a firearm is always illegal in port is not necessarily true but it may be. Once the vessel itself is armed (deck mounted guns etc) then it is effectively a warship and the laws seem to get weird. The general consensus right now seems to be that by and large make the carrying of weaponry in territorial waters impractical at best under present law. Depending on the ship's flag, its destination port and the relevant maritime law, firearms may be illegal aboard ships. Many of the laws prohibiting weapons are apparently very old laws. Also many of the rules really are firearm importation rules which vary greatly from country to country.
The article you cite also is only discussing yachts, not commercial vessels. Bear in mind too that the legal framework in the article you mention is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which has been signed but NOT ratified by the United States.