I agree with all of this except for the notion that only the government can do bad legally. That's not at all true. There is plenty of room within the law for people to take bad acts, just as the government can. There are some bad acts reserved to people, some to agents of the government.
Finally, I maintain that money == power precisely because money == the ability to perform acts or to have acts performed for you. The more money you have, the less legalities will get in the way of what acts you can perform.
Sure, but I think that just proves my point: no matter what assets you have, you can always wind up in a losing position. So you should look to having the most flexible and capable response if you want to have what limited control over your situation is possible. Very few fixed assets can deliver significantly in that department.
I agree with most of what you say here, but I think my problem with your position is its inflexibility. Look at the situation with the hurricane. You say they have money but can't buy gas to get out before the hurricane comes. I say: imagine trying to get out if you didn't mind spending a million dollars to do it, because a million dollars was nothing to you. You could offer people $10,000 per gallon to siphon gas out of their cars, asking them to give up only one gallon, and I guarantee you, you'd be on your way. On the other hand, maybe in your world, you spent that money on a well stocked bomb shelter to give yourself power, in which case you can hope that the water table doesn't shift enough to do you in, because even well designed bomb shelters have a certain fragility.
To me the bottom line is: no matter what stuff you have, your position is always fragile.
Money has the maximum flexibility in terms of what sorts of dangerous events you can respond to, barring, of course, the complete breakdown of monetary society. In that worst case, I'd definitely want to have my bomb shelter and weapons, but otherwise, I think the money offers superior responding capability to any set of fixed assets.
Cheney's people might pick the cash currently. But, if they seemed close to prosecution on war crimes, I bet they'd choose the multi-country distributed package, as that increases their ability to respond to a variety of potential risks.
Indeed, as you say, liquidity is nearly always better, and that's what money is, maximum liquidity.
What all does it delete for you? Do you get a chance to change your mind about deleting things? Anyone willing to trust it on your system? Does it work on linux? Wine?
Wow, I agree with you 100%, except that money can buy every single thing you listed as a power: You can buy the ability to grow corn. You can pay to have a well dug. Heck, you can buy poland springs for that matter. You can absolutely insult the ethnic background, sexual and religious orientaton, and dress of every vendor you have, and as long as you have enough money to buy them out afterwards, you'll be completely fine. Money does require the willfull cooperation of others, but since there are so many others, there is no choice: there is not sufficient available power to overcome all of the others, so there's no point in playing that game. If weakness is having to subcontract out anything, then you're off the argument: we're discussing power in the context of conventional government power, which is all about subcontracting. You're off in the realm of theoretical power, which doesn't exist. George Bush has no power in your view: he subcontracts out everything he wants to do except exercise.
Money is the universal exchange mechanism for conventional power. Your hypothetical power which somehow is going to give you shelter unbreakable does not exist, thanks to the laws of thermodynamics.
I might agree with that, except for the evidence of people born rich: why are they so evil? Many of them aren't any good at acquiring additional money, but have plenty of other evil tendencies.
The only thing I think is wrong in this post is the claim that only power can corrupt. I think that's way off base, and flies in the face of my personal experience. I also think there's a fairly obvious connection between money and power, so much so that I think most people would agree that money == power.
As a simple example, if you have enough money, you can hire one person to kill another. If that's not power, I don't know what is.
Just in case you're not kidding, campaign finance laws restrict the forums in which you are allowed to communicate, and the messages you are allowed to communicate in those forums.
I'm sorry, you lost me right there. You have to be more careful about typos, that has a totally different meaning from: Money is the ultimate corrupter; Which I'm sure is what you meant to say. But you lose your audience right there if you make such an egregious error. Who's going to bother to read on?
Seriously, i've met thousands of people in my life, and inevitably, money and evil are positively and pretty much linearly correlated. Correlation does not require causation, but I think, in this case, it is causal.
Well, THX certification guarantees compatibility with a bunch of dolby output modes, so having a THX certified card adds some extra assurance that you are going to be compatible with a range of outputs. It could be that the onboard sound is equally compatible, but it's hard to tell just by looking, you'd really have to go into detail on the specs. Anyway, even if they turned out to be equally compatible, you'd still have the performance advantage with the audigy 2, I'm pretty sure there has yet to be an onboard sound system with the audigy's performance capacity.
Well, that would work if they payed me enough, but they didn't, which is why I left. I liked making games and all, and blizzard makes some of the best, but the hours are killer, and the rewards just don't justify it.
I'm sorry if I was unclear. There are a number of groups of people I'm talking about, and unfortunately there is some blurring. Let me see if I can clarify:
1) Coders, Artists : make the game, and have some input into game play / mechanics / balancing 2) Game designers: outline what the coders/artists should do, and have the authority to overrule #1 on most issues 3) PR/corporate people
Because of the history of blizzard, there is a lot of blurring between #2/#3. The people who design the games are typically well up the corporate ladder, and have concern for the public image.
Presumably slashdot wanted to hear from elements of #1 or #2 who were not also in category #3. But the answers you got were either filtered or written by #3.
Blizzard has a pretty strict policy about routing public communications through the PR department. Though I no longer work there and don't know for sure, I would feel confident betting $1000 that PR was involved in generating and sanitizing these answers (and i'm pretty poor, so that would be a big bet for me).
I assure you, more than enough devs at blizzard read slashdot. Most of the team will have seen this article, and many are surely irritated. Some may have even been consulted about answers, and are probably upset by the sanitization that has gone on. But that said, none will post here because Blizzard can be pretty draconian with its devs, and they fire people for smaller stuff than that.
Slashdot Mirror
Or also if you don't like it, participate in widespread civil disobedience. Oh wait ...
Although I for one fail to see what law you violate when you download poisoned torrents made freely available by the copyright holder.
Riiigght. Because otherwise, the porn companies would be all over those beautiful women utah is so known for.
I agree with all of this except for the notion that only the government can do bad legally. That's not at all true. There is plenty of room within the law for people to take bad acts, just as the government can. There are some bad acts reserved to people, some to agents of the government.
Finally, I maintain that money == power precisely because money == the ability to perform acts or to have acts performed for you. The more money you have, the less legalities will get in the way of what acts you can perform.
Please excuse the bugs, it's a first generation product. But version 2 is coming soon!
Sure, but I think that just proves my point: no matter what assets you have, you can always wind up in a losing position. So you should look to having the most flexible and capable response if you want to have what limited control over your situation is possible. Very few fixed assets can deliver significantly in that department.
I agree with most of what you say here, but I think my problem with your position is its inflexibility. Look at the situation with the hurricane. You say they have money but can't buy gas to get out before the hurricane comes. I say: imagine trying to get out if you didn't mind spending a million dollars to do it, because a million dollars was nothing to you. You could offer people $10,000 per gallon to siphon gas out of their cars, asking them to give up only one gallon, and I guarantee you, you'd be on your way. On the other hand, maybe in your world, you spent that money on a well stocked bomb shelter to give yourself power, in which case you can hope that the water table doesn't shift enough to do you in, because even well designed bomb shelters have a certain fragility.
To me the bottom line is: no matter what stuff you have, your position is always fragile.
Money has the maximum flexibility in terms of what sorts of dangerous events you can respond to, barring, of course, the complete breakdown of monetary society. In that worst case, I'd definitely want to have my bomb shelter and weapons, but otherwise, I think the money offers superior responding capability to any set of fixed assets.
Cheney's people might pick the cash currently. But, if they seemed close to prosecution on war crimes, I bet they'd choose the multi-country distributed package, as that increases their ability to respond to a variety of potential risks.
Indeed, as you say, liquidity is nearly always better, and that's what money is, maximum liquidity.
What all does it delete for you? Do you get a chance to change your mind about deleting things?
Anyone willing to trust it on your system?
Does it work on linux? Wine?
Wow, I agree with you 100%, except that money can buy every single thing you listed as a power:
You can buy the ability to grow corn. You can pay to have a well dug. Heck, you can buy poland springs for that matter.
You can absolutely insult the ethnic background, sexual and religious orientaton, and dress of every vendor you have, and as long as you have enough money to buy them out afterwards, you'll be completely fine. Money does require the willfull cooperation of others, but since there are so many others, there is no choice: there is not sufficient available power to overcome all of the others, so there's no point in playing that game. If weakness is having to subcontract out anything, then you're off the argument: we're discussing power in the context of conventional government power, which is all about subcontracting. You're off in the realm of theoretical power, which doesn't exist. George Bush has no power in your view: he subcontracts out everything he wants to do except exercise.
Money is the universal exchange mechanism for conventional power. Your hypothetical power which somehow is going to give you shelter unbreakable does not exist, thanks to the laws of thermodynamics.
Ah, thanks for clearing that up!
I think you're missing a key point: why did the soldiers kill the 50,000 innocents?
Were they paid by the government?
Was someone else paid to brainwash them by the government?
How did the soldiers kill the innocents?
Were they supplied guns and weapons paid for by the government?
Soldiers derive their power from the money that supports them, not the other way around.
I'm not sure I understand ... is this a support or refutation of my point? Looks like a support, except for the umm.
I might agree with that, except for the evidence of people born rich: why are they so evil? Many of them aren't any good at acquiring additional money, but have plenty of other evil tendencies.
The only thing I think is wrong in this post is the claim that only power can corrupt. I think that's way off base, and flies in the face of my personal experience. I also think there's a fairly obvious connection between money and power, so much so that I think most people would agree that money == power.
As a simple example, if you have enough money, you can hire one person to kill another. If that's not power, I don't know what is.
Just in case you're not kidding, campaign finance laws restrict the forums in which you are allowed to communicate, and the messages you are allowed to communicate in those forums.
I'm sorry, you lost me right there. You have to be more careful about typos, that has a totally different meaning from:
Money is the ultimate corrupter;
Which I'm sure is what you meant to say. But you lose your audience right there if you make such an egregious error. Who's going to bother to read on?
Seriously, i've met thousands of people in my life, and inevitably, money and evil are positively and pretty much linearly correlated. Correlation does not require causation, but I think, in this case, it is causal.
Well, THX certification guarantees compatibility with a bunch of dolby output modes, so having a THX certified card adds some extra assurance that you are going to be compatible with a range of outputs. It could be that the onboard sound is equally compatible, but it's hard to tell just by looking, you'd really have to go into detail on the specs. Anyway, even if they turned out to be equally compatible, you'd still have the performance advantage with the audigy 2, I'm pretty sure there has yet to be an onboard sound system with the audigy's performance capacity.
I was referring to the onboard sound not being THX certified, which is why the audigy 2 makes a good upgrade from the onboard sound.
Well, that would work if they payed me enough, but they didn't, which is why I left. I liked making games and all, and blizzard makes some of the best, but the hours are killer, and the rewards just don't justify it.
The short answer is control freaks way up the corporate ladder.
I'm sorry if I was unclear. There are a number of groups of people I'm talking about, and unfortunately there is some blurring. Let me see if I can clarify:
1) Coders, Artists : make the game, and have some input into game play / mechanics / balancing
2) Game designers: outline what the coders/artists should do, and have the authority to overrule #1 on most issues
3) PR/corporate people
Because of the history of blizzard, there is a lot of blurring between #2/#3. The people who design the games are typically well up the corporate ladder, and have concern for the public image.
Presumably slashdot wanted to hear from elements of #1 or #2 who were not also in category #3. But the answers you got were either filtered or written by #3.
Blizzard has a pretty strict policy about routing public communications through the PR department. Though I no longer work there and don't know for sure, I would feel confident betting $1000 that PR was involved in generating and sanitizing these answers (and i'm pretty poor, so that would be a big bet for me).
DirectTV sells a dual tuner dish now. It's pretty much the same price as a single dish, at least where I am. ($5 extra per month I think).
http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/imagine/TIVOQA.dsp
They should face up to the lawsuits. That's how the VCR won.
I assure you, more than enough devs at blizzard read slashdot. Most of the team will have seen this article, and many are surely irritated. Some may have even been consulted about answers, and are probably upset by the sanitization that has gone on. But that said, none will post here because Blizzard can be pretty draconian with its devs, and they fire people for smaller stuff than that.