If they don't play the game, it puts them in an even worse position to compete with Intel.
Trusted Computing is just a technology. Like all DRM schemes, it has some potentially stupid features that can be bad for users, but without legislation requiring its use, it is entirely inert. The proper response isn't to avoid hardware or software systems that offer support for both unrestricted and DRM-controlled media, but to avoid the DRM-controlled media.
Support for playback of DRM controlled media, in a player that will also play unrestricted media, actually adds value. This is because, at least in a hypothetical world where DRM media is cheaper, it increases consumer choice. A device that won't work with unrestricted media is broken.
Legislation banning devices that work with unrestricted media is the enemy, not customer hostile control schemes.
This seems to be a rather popular position. It embodies a rather dim view of Nader-nee-Dem supporters, unable to foresee Nader's inability to win, yanking the lever for their man, ignorant of the consequences. I don't think so. Your average voting, bipedal primate is wickedly good at applied game theory and certainly able to understand the two party situation endemic to presidential elections in the U.S.A., and the consequences of a third party vote.
I could get behind "Occasionally, a vote for Nader is a vote for McCain.", but anything more than that is overstating the case, as the joker voting for Nader knows damn well what he is doing, so you can't really assume that they would have voted democratic without Nader in the picture.
Stated another way: If people who voted for Nader were interested in making sure McCain did not win, they would vote for the Democratic party candidate, rather than Nader. That they vote for Nader indicates that they could give a flip about the choice between the major candidates, so it is a bit of a stretch to assign them either way.
A vote for Nader is...a vote for Nader(and all that stands for), unless you think the person voting is a blithering moron.
I've never voted for Nader, and I've voted both Democratic and Republican in presidential elections, so let's not make this about me.
It depends a great deal on what the changes were. If the changes were gratuitous, sure. If the changes were beneficial to the consumer, not so much.
Neither link provides details about the changes, so we can only speculate. The documenting of the incompatibilities and publishing of the workarounds at least suggests that the changes are purposeful and in the interests of consumers.
I don't think anybody is trying to disclaim that investments carry risk. I think the issue is that it is entirely a different sort of risk than something like casino gambling. In a casino, if you play for a long time, you will almost certainly lose money; this is endemic to their operations, and the choice between games isn't relevant, as they all favor the house. In investing, the lowest risk instruments, as you say, will essentially track inflation. So if you compare the lowest risk investment, which carries a very small chance of decreasing in value over time, to the lowest risk casino game, which carries a very large chance of decreasing your stack over time, well, you aren't talking about the same thing.
A person investing a significant portion of their personal wealth in one stock that has a market price based largely on growth is certainly gambling. A person investing their personal wealth in a broad portfolio of investments, with a level of estimated risk adjusted to their time horizon, is betting that markets will go up, which is endemic to the 'goal' of the world economy as long as population and/or living standards go up.
So, in the current environment, where populations are exploding and everyone everywhere is working to increase their standard of living, the long term expansion of the global economy is a pretty safe assumption. There are some issues surrounding energy availability, but the problems with things like nuclear aren't really technological, they are economic and political, and those problems go away when other energy supplies contract. A switchover might bring a great deal of short and medium term pain, but it could happen(and is happening currently), so it doesn't factor all that heavily into the long term situation(unless you think people will be happy making due with less and less...).
My 1997 vehicle has a 3.5 liter V6 engine that shipped providing 214 horsepower, I imagine it isn't operating at quite that point anymore, but probably most of 200 horsepower. It get's mid 20's loaded or not, if it is driven with a light foot.
I guarantee it drives nothing like a 40 horsepower beetle.
That just gets hand waved away as soft or micro evolution.
As far as I can tell, the disagreement doesn't stem from an examination of the evidence, but from belief that man was created to be as he is. If you can't get around the belief, you aren't going to get anywhere else.
First Solar is a solar startup. They are cranking along nicely at the moment.
There are serious efforts at generating power from wind all over the place. The really good resources are either already in use or enjoying high levels NIMBYism. Lesser resources are also actively being exploited. The payoff time on the capital expenditure for wind power is still a bit higher than it needs to be for it to really take off, but the technology itself is more or less mature, at least for big towers.
You don't need to shift to a consumption tax to simplify the tax system.
Lowering corporate taxes and getting rid of loopholes could be done in the context of the current system. Lowering overall corporate tax rates would reduce the incentives to lobby for exceptions. I'm not sure you do away with them entirely(which actually makes quite a bit of sense, since they just treat taxes as a cost and pass it on to their customers), as taxing the corporate income may be easier than chasing around corporations that fail to pass income to their shareholders, or try to do it in sneaky ways. The idea isn't to eliminate the tax on the income, it is to tax it in one place, as individual income.
Eliminating the cute fiction of 'employer contributions' from FICA taxes(people who think this is a stupid way of looking at it: your employer looks at that money as part of the cost of employing you, nothing more, nothing less) would probably go a long ways towards improving things, as people would collectively go "Are you kidding me!??!!!" when they found out that it wasn't 15% of their potential income that was being spent and written down as an IOU from the government to itself, but 30%.
Make some rules about the budget being purely based on income taxes(with any funds from regulatory taxes applied to lowering the income tax rate for that year) and there is some chance that people would actually have some sense of what they were getting for their money.
None of that is stuff that software companies care very much about. Sure, they figure it is worth sticking in their, just to see what sticks, but the real reason that there is a EULA that pops up is the warranty disclaimer. It's awful hard to state that you understood it, did not agree with it, and then still argue that they should cover your use.
Let's do a little thought experiment. We will imagine that 15 years in the future a foundation, the Gill and Belinda Mates Foundation, has cut the incidence of malaria by 50%. How much of a profit could they show and still have your approval? 50%? $1? None? How much?
Anyway, it is still believable that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is in the process of 'figuring things out'. If in 20 years(or probably even less time) they have done more harm than good, people will listen to what you are saying. For the moment, don't let it shock you when they get the benefit of the doubt, given that they have publicly stated that they plan to spend the foundation down to nothing before the end of their lives.
I didn't mean to equate 1 trip to the store to 1 gallon of gas(I admit that this is a reasonable interpretation of what I wrote), I meant to point out that plastic bags and gasoline are rough equivalents in terms of consumption, and that people tend to use a great deal more gasoline without giving it any where near the thought that goes into the bags. I'm also all for awareness, but at some point, that means people need to move past the bags, and there seems to be quite a few people who aren't interested in doing that.
I didn't really understand the point of that comic. The Drake equation isn't much as an insight(I'm not sure anyone has every really claimed it is), but it has done a great job in providing context to the discussion.
If smart guy from 1900 had 2 kids and has 250 living descendants and dumb guy from 1900 had 12 kids and has 50 living descendants, 'dumb' is only enjoying proximate success, while getting demolished by 'smart' in the long term. I have no idea what the real numbers are, but I think it is a much more interesting question than birth rate vs IQ.
I understood what you meant; I tend to fall in the camp that fails to separate humanity from nature, hence my harping on the distinction.
If I did have a way to hide satellites, I would make damn sure that I had some satellites that weren't hidden, and I would publicly complain about the fact that people were tracking them.
Nothing like a little misdirection in the morning.
(That the Allies sent spotter planes out to get spotted by the enemy that they had located by intercepting and decrypting message traffic, and gave the enemy time to radio home that they had been spotted, is one of my favorite things, ever.)
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If they don't play the game, it puts them in an even worse position to compete with Intel.
Trusted Computing is just a technology. Like all DRM schemes, it has some potentially stupid features that can be bad for users, but without legislation requiring its use, it is entirely inert. The proper response isn't to avoid hardware or software systems that offer support for both unrestricted and DRM-controlled media, but to avoid the DRM-controlled media.
Support for playback of DRM controlled media, in a player that will also play unrestricted media, actually adds value. This is because, at least in a hypothetical world where DRM media is cheaper, it increases consumer choice. A device that won't work with unrestricted media is broken.
Legislation banning devices that work with unrestricted media is the enemy, not customer hostile control schemes.
You mean we are capable of being a better nation than this.
Semantics, but there is an important difference there.
Between Cygwin and KDE4, GNU/Windows draws nigh.
This seems to be a rather popular position. It embodies a rather dim view of Nader-nee-Dem supporters, unable to foresee Nader's inability to win, yanking the lever for their man, ignorant of the consequences. I don't think so. Your average voting, bipedal primate is wickedly good at applied game theory and certainly able to understand the two party situation endemic to presidential elections in the U.S.A., and the consequences of a third party vote.
I could get behind "Occasionally, a vote for Nader is a vote for McCain.", but anything more than that is overstating the case, as the joker voting for Nader knows damn well what he is doing, so you can't really assume that they would have voted democratic without Nader in the picture.
Stated another way: If people who voted for Nader were interested in making sure McCain did not win, they would vote for the Democratic party candidate, rather than Nader. That they vote for Nader indicates that they could give a flip about the choice between the major candidates, so it is a bit of a stretch to assign them either way.
A vote for Nader is...a vote for Nader(and all that stands for), unless you think the person voting is a blithering moron.
I've never voted for Nader, and I've voted both Democratic and Republican in presidential elections, so let's not make this about me.
It depends a great deal on what the changes were. If the changes were gratuitous, sure. If the changes were beneficial to the consumer, not so much.
Neither link provides details about the changes, so we can only speculate. The documenting of the incompatibilities and publishing of the workarounds at least suggests that the changes are purposeful and in the interests of consumers.
I don't think anybody is trying to disclaim that investments carry risk. I think the issue is that it is entirely a different sort of risk than something like casino gambling. In a casino, if you play for a long time, you will almost certainly lose money; this is endemic to their operations, and the choice between games isn't relevant, as they all favor the house. In investing, the lowest risk instruments, as you say, will essentially track inflation. So if you compare the lowest risk investment, which carries a very small chance of decreasing in value over time, to the lowest risk casino game, which carries a very large chance of decreasing your stack over time, well, you aren't talking about the same thing.
A person investing a significant portion of their personal wealth in one stock that has a market price based largely on growth is certainly gambling. A person investing their personal wealth in a broad portfolio of investments, with a level of estimated risk adjusted to their time horizon, is betting that markets will go up, which is endemic to the 'goal' of the world economy as long as population and/or living standards go up.
So, in the current environment, where populations are exploding and everyone everywhere is working to increase their standard of living, the long term expansion of the global economy is a pretty safe assumption. There are some issues surrounding energy availability, but the problems with things like nuclear aren't really technological, they are economic and political, and those problems go away when other energy supplies contract. A switchover might bring a great deal of short and medium term pain, but it could happen(and is happening currently), so it doesn't factor all that heavily into the long term situation(unless you think people will be happy making due with less and less...).
Not in ESB man.
Well, unless you are talking about the acting when Luke finds out who his daddy be.
If it costs more than it is worth to you, don't buy it!
If it is worth more to you than paid, what does it matter that the price dropped?
I can see being disappointed that I bought just before a price drop, but pissed? Not really.
My 1997 vehicle has a 3.5 liter V6 engine that shipped providing 214 horsepower, I imagine it isn't operating at quite that point anymore, but probably most of 200 horsepower. It get's mid 20's loaded or not, if it is driven with a light foot.
I guarantee it drives nothing like a 40 horsepower beetle.
Does the flying spaghetti monster give you a meatball when you thank him for something?
That just gets hand waved away as soft or micro evolution.
As far as I can tell, the disagreement doesn't stem from an examination of the evidence, but from belief that man was created to be as he is. If you can't get around the belief, you aren't going to get anywhere else.
You are talking about a medical cost sharing program.
Tying costs to risk is a good thing in insurance.
First Solar is a solar startup. They are cranking along nicely at the moment.
There are serious efforts at generating power from wind all over the place. The really good resources are either already in use or enjoying high levels NIMBYism. Lesser resources are also actively being exploited. The payoff time on the capital expenditure for wind power is still a bit higher than it needs to be for it to really take off, but the technology itself is more or less mature, at least for big towers.
GW is a net source of nuclear terror.
Or does nuclear terror refer to something other than people mispronouncing nuclear?
I used print screen and an image editor...
You don't need to shift to a consumption tax to simplify the tax system.
Lowering corporate taxes and getting rid of loopholes could be done in the context of the current system. Lowering overall corporate tax rates would reduce the incentives to lobby for exceptions. I'm not sure you do away with them entirely(which actually makes quite a bit of sense, since they just treat taxes as a cost and pass it on to their customers), as taxing the corporate income may be easier than chasing around corporations that fail to pass income to their shareholders, or try to do it in sneaky ways. The idea isn't to eliminate the tax on the income, it is to tax it in one place, as individual income.
Eliminating the cute fiction of 'employer contributions' from FICA taxes(people who think this is a stupid way of looking at it: your employer looks at that money as part of the cost of employing you, nothing more, nothing less) would probably go a long ways towards improving things, as people would collectively go "Are you kidding me!??!!!" when they found out that it wasn't 15% of their potential income that was being spent and written down as an IOU from the government to itself, but 30%.
Make some rules about the budget being purely based on income taxes(with any funds from regulatory taxes applied to lowering the income tax rate for that year) and there is some chance that people would actually have some sense of what they were getting for their money.
Please forward Wedding date and time.
I have a plan.
None of that is stuff that software companies care very much about. Sure, they figure it is worth sticking in their, just to see what sticks, but the real reason that there is a EULA that pops up is the warranty disclaimer. It's awful hard to state that you understood it, did not agree with it, and then still argue that they should cover your use.
Don't forget Skype, and the blase attitude about fraud that has been there since pretty much the beginning.
Let's do a little thought experiment. We will imagine that 15 years in the future a foundation, the Gill and Belinda Mates Foundation, has cut the incidence of malaria by 50%. How much of a profit could they show and still have your approval? 50%? $1? None? How much?
Anyway, it is still believable that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is in the process of 'figuring things out'. If in 20 years(or probably even less time) they have done more harm than good, people will listen to what you are saying. For the moment, don't let it shock you when they get the benefit of the doubt, given that they have publicly stated that they plan to spend the foundation down to nothing before the end of their lives.
I mostly got it from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, but I did check to be sure that it actually happened:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra#German_suspicions_about_Enigma_cryptanalysis
Should at least point in in the right direction...
I didn't mean to equate 1 trip to the store to 1 gallon of gas(I admit that this is a reasonable interpretation of what I wrote), I meant to point out that plastic bags and gasoline are rough equivalents in terms of consumption, and that people tend to use a great deal more gasoline without giving it any where near the thought that goes into the bags. I'm also all for awareness, but at some point, that means people need to move past the bags, and there seems to be quite a few people who aren't interested in doing that.
I didn't really understand the point of that comic. The Drake equation isn't much as an insight(I'm not sure anyone has every really claimed it is), but it has done a great job in providing context to the discussion.
If smart guy from 1900 had 2 kids and has 250 living descendants and dumb guy from 1900 had 12 kids and has 50 living descendants, 'dumb' is only enjoying proximate success, while getting demolished by 'smart' in the long term. I have no idea what the real numbers are, but I think it is a much more interesting question than birth rate vs IQ.
I understood what you meant; I tend to fall in the camp that fails to separate humanity from nature, hence my harping on the distinction.
If I did have a way to hide satellites, I would make damn sure that I had some satellites that weren't hidden, and I would publicly complain about the fact that people were tracking them.
Nothing like a little misdirection in the morning.
(That the Allies sent spotter planes out to get spotted by the enemy that they had located by intercepting and decrypting message traffic, and gave the enemy time to radio home that they had been spotted, is one of my favorite things, ever.)