But your whole point is based on a notion that is so far out of wack with current international processes that it is meaningless.
I was pointing out that it is already the case that the Constitution is only helpful inside the United States(unfortunately, increasingly for citizens only), and that actions with international scope already have international consequences, and that those consequences are dealt with in a sane way, not by doing whatever China(or whoever) say. So even if a single country started making claims about what people in other countries could say about them(this is your scenario, correct?), there is nothing in the current system to suggest that it would be a significant burden upon travelers, because other governments would not, in general, blindly cooperate.
I mean, its pretty frightening to think that if you flew to China, they could execute you right after you got off the plane, but that isn't a good reason to worry about flying to China, because it is absurdly unlikely to happen.
So the potential international scope that the internet brings to our actions is certainly interesting, but because a large part of the reason that countries respect each others sovereignty is the expectation that theirs will be respected in turn, the implications of that scope really aren't all that different than the status quo, where you already need to give consideration to your safety and local laws when you travel.
There is a reasonable chance that the US government would go ahead and not extradite you by default, and if China still wanted to extradite you, they would have to have a lawyer plead their case in a US court, in which case, the US government would be the defendant, and they would defend themselves. If they lost that suit, then you would have to get a lawyer to defend yourself from the US government, but the they wouldn't lose that suit, especially in the case of a Constitutional issue. So, no, you would not have to defend yourself at great expense.
Really, the implications of traveling outside one's own country are only frightening if you have previously failed to realize that there are many countries in the world that have different rules. It hasn't ever been the case that the rights granted by a country apply to its citizens while they are in other countries; this is referred to as "sovereignty". Governments will often fight for their citizens in other countries, but they rarely do anything that is illegal in the country at issue.
The problem is that we haven't had all that much innovation in the areas of chemistry and anti-gravity. So the whole getting to orbit thing is still really dangerous and expensive. And no one thinks that they have a self contained ecosystem that needs the challenges of a vacuum to improve, so the 'life boat' argument sort of falls flat(because money is better spent on things other than leaving the gravity well we call home).
Realistically, the challenge of our age is feeding everybody(not so much now as in 25 or 40 years, when there are 14 billion of us, but also now).
It depends a great deal on how well he communicated his intent to the phone support; the case was in fact returned undamaged, it was the signatures and art that were damaged. If he didn't make it clear that he was concerned more with the writing than the case, a busy person would say "yep, case doesn't get damaged or replaced".
To be fair to Fox, it isn't all the likely that Firefly ever would have gotten ratings high enough to justify its production costs compared to the ratings that they can get with a much cheaper show(something like 1/2 the ratings at 1/10 the cost if that wasn't clear).
There doesn't seem to be a 'certified fair labor' movement developing. There are people who work pretty hard to buy union made, but they don't seem to carry that attitude into the grocery store. If there was, at least you wouldn't be able to laugh at their hypocrisy.
It would be interesting to see what a prison that built cars cheaper than union workers looked like. It isn't obvious to me (even with unions pushing up for-pay labor costs) that the prison labor would actually be cheaper to use to build something like a car(especially if you factor in the price of feeding and housing the prisoners).
I guess if there isn't any skill involved in working on an assembly line or in a mine, or if the prisoners have those skills, it might work.
It depends an awful lot upon perceived value; if someone thinks Vista is worth $1000 and Kubuntu is worth $200, they will be willing to pay a lot more for Vista, if they think they need whatever is creating that perceived value.
If they think Vista is worth less than or close to $200 and they think Kubuntu is worth more than $12, they are going to be a lot more likely to use Kubuntu. This is probably a pretty common mindset among Linux users, but it doesn't necessarily follow that other people will care about the $180 price difference(because they have different estimates for the values involved).
If they are even sort of rational and bought it on purpose they didn't get screwed. They might be disappointed that they paid more than they would need to now, but that isn't getting screwed, that's a risk you take when you buy anything.
You wouldn't insist that the gas station actually screwed you if the price of gasoline dropped a week after you bought gas would you? Same thing, except for software, the seller mostly sets the price based on what he thinks will be most profitable, rather than some intrinsic cost.
Why not just make the party extending the credit responsible for any fraud in the transaction? They might decide that they need a system that makes it very difficult to create a fraudulent transaction(like you describe), or they might decide that they can make more money with a less convoluted system(in which case everybody still wins, except the fraudsters).
The problem with the current system is that consequences are often dumped on people that are powerless to prevent them, not the frequency of fraudulent transactions.
You left out no more food if you can't pay for it. I guess that would be insane.
Anyway, the biggest problem is the idea that all you have to do to make 'it', 'stick' is make the punishment terrifying; there are actually people in prison who basically lack the context to understand what 'it' is, and thus didn't know that 'it' was an important thing to pay attention to, so they weren't paying any attention to 'it'. They are literally born into crisis and live their lives in crisis. This by no means excuses illegal behavior, but it probably makes sense to at least use that information when designing your system of punishment(especially if your ostensible goal is to 'make the world better' and not to 'punish the baddies'; to me, the second requires a rather one dimensional view of the world).
There are other problems; under the system you lay out, the punishment for a mild crime would create a huge incentive to commit worse crimes(why not kill you if I think it will prevent me from suffering for 25 years, the punishment for killing you won't be that much worse). It would be expensive(if it were cheaper to use manual labor in gravel pits, someone would be doing that). If someone who was unjustly imprisoned died because they couldn't pay for health care anymore, that's a much bigger injustice than providing health care to those who may no deserve it.
What was the context of the demand? Where you playing Halo, and he walked in and said "Explain the relationship between Neanderthals and the fossil record in Africa. You must include my incorrect assumption in your explanation". Or were you having some discussion that provided the context?
Anyway, the correct answer is "There isn't direct fossil evidence of Neanderthals in Africa. There are suggestions that they evolved during the same time period as Homo Sapiens, in a different part of the world, and were then wiped out as modern man spread into the regions they occupied. The best current explanation is that they share a common ancestor with man, but the specifics simply aren't known."
If he won't attempt to achieve a common understanding of the facts under discussion, there isn't any way to engage him. The best way to test this is to attempt to come to a common understanding regarding the facts under discussion.
We are engaged in an ongoing experiment to find out whether the earth can support 6 billion people on a continuous basis. It might only be able to support 6 billion people for 100 years or whatever.
Using current technologies and given current resource consumption patterns, 100 years is optimistic, but we aren't stuck with those, hence the ongoing part of the experiment.
That depends on whether the EU banned the sale of Microsoft products, or simply prevented Microsoft from operating in the EU. If someone else was importing their software, confiscating it wouldn't hurt Microsoft any.
My point was more that the EU can't actually bankrupt Microsoft, not that they are toothless.
You mean that they would be forced to stop doing business in EU controlled regions. At the moment, the U.S. government would not liquidate Microsoft in order to make the EU happy. Probably never.
Here is a link to IBM's 2006 annual report, showing where their revenues come from(I didn't find 2007 in my brief search; it doesn't seem to be released/published, but it is likely that it is quite similar to 2005 and 2006):
Anyway, they make more than 2/3 of their revenue providing software and services, and a little less than 1/3 of their revenue on hardware. Much of their software and services is built for their hardware, but they will work with other vendor's equipment.
I'm not claiming that Silicon Valley is more about software than it is about hardware(So I don't need to back up that claim). I'm claiming that pointing to a short list of companies that mostly make hardware doesn't actually establish that hardware sales dominate, it simply demonstrates that they exist. My point was that the existence of *any* software company, or really, any software revenues, means that the only way to figure out the answer to the question of which is greater is by exhaustive enumeration(Or an enumeration that at least includes some software companies, rather than none).
Personally, I find it much more interesting to look at profits rather than market capitalization or revenues, as it provides a little bit more information about how much value creation is going on. Apple has huge revenues, but they also have a high cost of revenue(because they actually make shit), whereas Microsoft has huge revenues but relatively low cost of revenue(because they mostly sell licenses).
So even though it is obvious that you need hardware to have software, if the hardware is mostly a necessary commodity and there is a great deal of value creation in software...the way I choose to look at is that the business is software and the hardware is something you have to deal with to run the business. But to each their own, I am not concerned if you choose to look at that same way I do or not.
The economy doesn't have a purpose. Individuals within it may have a purpose, and its regulating bodies may have a purpose, but the economy itself doesn't have any purpose, beyond the sum of those purposes.
Check out Microsoft, Google and Oracle for companies that make most of their money from software(and nearly offset the market caps of all the stocks you listed). Any list that doesn't split earnings/revenues/market cap between hardware and software and isn't exhaustive, isn't going to be worth it.
The problem being discussed: People aren't interested in science.
Your take on the source of the problem: People aren't interested in science.
Your solution to the problem: Make them be interested in science.
I would propose that it makes a lot more sense to not worry too much about it. Motivation is at least as important as ability when it comes to learning. Every dollar spent trying to entice someone who isn't interested is a dollar not spent educating someone who is interested. As long as there is someone else who *is* interested, it's a waste of time.
What? Are you trying to correct the usage of 'losing' in the summary? It's already correct.
Did I miss something? Are you making some other point?
Who let the all the people unable to make this distinction loose on the internet? Why are there so many? Why are there so many who insist on making the correction in the wrong direction?
The potential for market growth goes both ways; it is easier to enter a faster growing market(because there are more 'new' customers to pick up).
Another concern with Google is that it is very easy to compete with them. You don't even need to offer more effective advertising, you just need to offer advertising that is more effective per dollar.
It's interesting that people cast them as going 'head to head'. Sure, they compete a great deal for talent, and there is some value to the mind share that comes with being King Tech, but for the most part, Google isn't paying a whole lot of attention to how much desktop software Microsoft is selling, and Microsoft isn't entering(working in...) the online business because Google is in it, they are entering the online business because they see a whole bunch of money to be made(and they are following Google because Google seems to have figured out one of the better ways to get hold of that money). They certainly aren't treating it as their only future business.
Slashdot Mirror
But your whole point is based on a notion that is so far out of wack with current international processes that it is meaningless.
I was pointing out that it is already the case that the Constitution is only helpful inside the United States(unfortunately, increasingly for citizens only), and that actions with international scope already have international consequences, and that those consequences are dealt with in a sane way, not by doing whatever China(or whoever) say. So even if a single country started making claims about what people in other countries could say about them(this is your scenario, correct?), there is nothing in the current system to suggest that it would be a significant burden upon travelers, because other governments would not, in general, blindly cooperate.
I mean, its pretty frightening to think that if you flew to China, they could execute you right after you got off the plane, but that isn't a good reason to worry about flying to China, because it is absurdly unlikely to happen.
So the potential international scope that the internet brings to our actions is certainly interesting, but because a large part of the reason that countries respect each others sovereignty is the expectation that theirs will be respected in turn, the implications of that scope really aren't all that different than the status quo, where you already need to give consideration to your safety and local laws when you travel.
My point was more that it isn't worth it to complain(because you can't please everybody) than it was about the merits of your specific complaint.
There is a reasonable chance that the US government would go ahead and not extradite you by default, and if China still wanted to extradite you, they would have to have a lawyer plead their case in a US court, in which case, the US government would be the defendant, and they would defend themselves. If they lost that suit, then you would have to get a lawyer to defend yourself from the US government, but the they wouldn't lose that suit, especially in the case of a Constitutional issue. So, no, you would not have to defend yourself at great expense.
Really, the implications of traveling outside one's own country are only frightening if you have previously failed to realize that there are many countries in the world that have different rules. It hasn't ever been the case that the rights granted by a country apply to its citizens while they are in other countries; this is referred to as "sovereignty". Governments will often fight for their citizens in other countries, but they rarely do anything that is illegal in the country at issue.
The problem is that we haven't had all that much innovation in the areas of chemistry and anti-gravity. So the whole getting to orbit thing is still really dangerous and expensive. And no one thinks that they have a self contained ecosystem that needs the challenges of a vacuum to improve, so the 'life boat' argument sort of falls flat(because money is better spent on things other than leaving the gravity well we call home).
Realistically, the challenge of our age is feeding everybody(not so much now as in 25 or 40 years, when there are 14 billion of us, but also now).
It depends a great deal on how well he communicated his intent to the phone support; the case was in fact returned undamaged, it was the signatures and art that were damaged. If he didn't make it clear that he was concerned more with the writing than the case, a busy person would say "yep, case doesn't get damaged or replaced".
To be fair to Fox, it isn't all the likely that Firefly ever would have gotten ratings high enough to justify its production costs compared to the ratings that they can get with a much cheaper show(something like 1/2 the ratings at 1/10 the cost if that wasn't clear).
There doesn't seem to be a 'certified fair labor' movement developing. There are people who work pretty hard to buy union made, but they don't seem to carry that attitude into the grocery store. If there was, at least you wouldn't be able to laugh at their hypocrisy.
It would be interesting to see what a prison that built cars cheaper than union workers looked like. It isn't obvious to me (even with unions pushing up for-pay labor costs) that the prison labor would actually be cheaper to use to build something like a car(especially if you factor in the price of feeding and housing the prisoners).
I guess if there isn't any skill involved in working on an assembly line or in a mine, or if the prisoners have those skills, it might work.
It depends an awful lot upon perceived value; if someone thinks Vista is worth $1000 and Kubuntu is worth $200, they will be willing to pay a lot more for Vista, if they think they need whatever is creating that perceived value.
If they think Vista is worth less than or close to $200 and they think Kubuntu is worth more than $12, they are going to be a lot more likely to use Kubuntu. This is probably a pretty common mindset among Linux users, but it doesn't necessarily follow that other people will care about the $180 price difference(because they have different estimates for the values involved).
If they are even sort of rational and bought it on purpose they didn't get screwed. They might be disappointed that they paid more than they would need to now, but that isn't getting screwed, that's a risk you take when you buy anything.
You wouldn't insist that the gas station actually screwed you if the price of gasoline dropped a week after you bought gas would you? Same thing, except for software, the seller mostly sets the price based on what he thinks will be most profitable, rather than some intrinsic cost.
Meanwhile, someone somewhere is complaining about /. turning into Slashmeat and posting every single software release.
Why not just make the party extending the credit responsible for any fraud in the transaction? They might decide that they need a system that makes it very difficult to create a fraudulent transaction(like you describe), or they might decide that they can make more money with a less convoluted system(in which case everybody still wins, except the fraudsters).
The problem with the current system is that consequences are often dumped on people that are powerless to prevent them, not the frequency of fraudulent transactions.
You left out no more food if you can't pay for it. I guess that would be insane.
Anyway, the biggest problem is the idea that all you have to do to make 'it', 'stick' is make the punishment terrifying; there are actually people in prison who basically lack the context to understand what 'it' is, and thus didn't know that 'it' was an important thing to pay attention to, so they weren't paying any attention to 'it'. They are literally born into crisis and live their lives in crisis. This by no means excuses illegal behavior, but it probably makes sense to at least use that information when designing your system of punishment(especially if your ostensible goal is to 'make the world better' and not to 'punish the baddies'; to me, the second requires a rather one dimensional view of the world).
There are other problems; under the system you lay out, the punishment for a mild crime would create a huge incentive to commit worse crimes(why not kill you if I think it will prevent me from suffering for 25 years, the punishment for killing you won't be that much worse). It would be expensive(if it were cheaper to use manual labor in gravel pits, someone would be doing that). If someone who was unjustly imprisoned died because they couldn't pay for health care anymore, that's a much bigger injustice than providing health care to those who may no deserve it.
What was the context of the demand? Where you playing Halo, and he walked in and said "Explain the relationship between Neanderthals and the fossil record in Africa. You must include my incorrect assumption in your explanation". Or were you having some discussion that provided the context?
Anyway, the correct answer is "There isn't direct fossil evidence of Neanderthals in Africa. There are suggestions that they evolved during the same time period as Homo Sapiens, in a different part of the world, and were then wiped out as modern man spread into the regions they occupied. The best current explanation is that they share a common ancestor with man, but the specifics simply aren't known."
If he won't attempt to achieve a common understanding of the facts under discussion, there isn't any way to engage him. The best way to test this is to attempt to come to a common understanding regarding the facts under discussion.
We are engaged in an ongoing experiment to find out whether the earth can support 6 billion people on a continuous basis. It might only be able to support 6 billion people for 100 years or whatever.
Using current technologies and given current resource consumption patterns, 100 years is optimistic, but we aren't stuck with those, hence the ongoing part of the experiment.
Plenty of people get sentimental about business models.
That depends on whether the EU banned the sale of Microsoft products, or simply prevented Microsoft from operating in the EU. If someone else was importing their software, confiscating it wouldn't hurt Microsoft any.
My point was more that the EU can't actually bankrupt Microsoft, not that they are toothless.
HMOs and PPOs are pretty much exactly what you are describing, with doctors instead of consultants.
You mean that they would be forced to stop doing business in EU controlled regions. At the moment, the U.S. government would not liquidate Microsoft in order to make the EU happy. Probably never.
Here is a link to IBM's 2006 annual report, showing where their revenues come from(I didn't find 2007 in my brief search; it doesn't seem to be released/published, but it is likely that it is quite similar to 2005 and 2006):
http://www.ibm.com/annualreport/2006/md_4segment.shtml
Anyway, they make more than 2/3 of their revenue providing software and services, and a little less than 1/3 of their revenue on hardware. Much of their software and services is built for their hardware, but they will work with other vendor's equipment.
I'm not claiming that Silicon Valley is more about software than it is about hardware(So I don't need to back up that claim). I'm claiming that pointing to a short list of companies that mostly make hardware doesn't actually establish that hardware sales dominate, it simply demonstrates that they exist. My point was that the existence of *any* software company, or really, any software revenues, means that the only way to figure out the answer to the question of which is greater is by exhaustive enumeration(Or an enumeration that at least includes some software companies, rather than none).
Personally, I find it much more interesting to look at profits rather than market capitalization or revenues, as it provides a little bit more information about how much value creation is going on. Apple has huge revenues, but they also have a high cost of revenue(because they actually make shit), whereas Microsoft has huge revenues but relatively low cost of revenue(because they mostly sell licenses).
So even though it is obvious that you need hardware to have software, if the hardware is mostly a necessary commodity and there is a great deal of value creation in software...the way I choose to look at is that the business is software and the hardware is something you have to deal with to run the business. But to each their own, I am not concerned if you choose to look at that same way I do or not.
The economy doesn't have a purpose. Individuals within it may have a purpose, and its regulating bodies may have a purpose, but the economy itself doesn't have any purpose, beyond the sum of those purposes.
IBM sells an awful lot of software.
Check out Microsoft, Google and Oracle for companies that make most of their money from software(and nearly offset the market caps of all the stocks you listed). Any list that doesn't split earnings/revenues/market cap between hardware and software and isn't exhaustive, isn't going to be worth it.
The problem being discussed: People aren't interested in science.
Your take on the source of the problem: People aren't interested in science.
Your solution to the problem: Make them be interested in science.
I would propose that it makes a lot more sense to not worry too much about it. Motivation is at least as important as ability when it comes to learning. Every dollar spent trying to entice someone who isn't interested is a dollar not spent educating someone who is interested. As long as there is someone else who *is* interested, it's a waste of time.
What? Are you trying to correct the usage of 'losing' in the summary? It's already correct.
Did I miss something? Are you making some other point?
Who let the all the people unable to make this distinction loose on the internet? Why are there so many? Why are there so many who insist on making the correction in the wrong direction?
The potential for market growth goes both ways; it is easier to enter a faster growing market(because there are more 'new' customers to pick up).
Another concern with Google is that it is very easy to compete with them. You don't even need to offer more effective advertising, you just need to offer advertising that is more effective per dollar.
It's interesting that people cast them as going 'head to head'. Sure, they compete a great deal for talent, and there is some value to the mind share that comes with being King Tech, but for the most part, Google isn't paying a whole lot of attention to how much desktop software Microsoft is selling, and Microsoft isn't entering(working in...) the online business because Google is in it, they are entering the online business because they see a whole bunch of money to be made(and they are following Google because Google seems to have figured out one of the better ways to get hold of that money). They certainly aren't treating it as their only future business.