Because "separation of church and state" doesn't seem to matter to our unwashed masses. It's sad, really, that so many people think that a person's religion has some direct correlation to their ability to run a country, but we keep proving time and time again that we think it does.
So who decides that those "don't deserve"? Not everyone on welfare is on it by choice. Poor families don't want to live in shitty neighborhoods that aren't safe and where their children don't get the same quality education.
We have no "left" party in the United States. We have a moderate party with vaguely left leanings and a "conservative" party which really isn't much different except with respect to religious beliefs (currently) and a few other social issues. There is no longer (and hasn't been for a long time) a party of small government and "personal responsibility" that advocates not having social programs. If there was such a party they would have fought much harder to abolish Social Security, amongst many other programs. They wouldn't have instituted a "no child left behind" policy that brings the standard down for the whole so that a few can be pushed through the system whether they deserve to be or not.
Back to your point, "leftism" isn't bad, it's just not based entirely on greed. In fact, leftism, in theory, is getting back to the family unit, and extending that to helping people not directly related. The whole "we're only as strong as our weakest link" thing. It works on a small scale, but is unwieldy on a large scale, which is the real problem.
They control a dominant position in the market because they've been there for so long. Looking at the statistics though, they are hemorrhaging market share in the laptop world (which is where the future is) and are also losing share elsewhere, though not as quickly. Remember, nobody stays at the top forever. "The king is dead. Long live the king" and all that, though I think they've still got some life in them.
They're not down for the count but they need to do something soon to recover what they've already lost.
Apple has 10% of the overall market, but something like 40% of the new laptop market, if I remember correctly the stats I read recently. With more and more people moving to the laptop and mobile market, that does constitute a formidable giant, especially when you consider they've been around as long as MS and are gaining position, rather than losing it.
That said, it's a cyclical market, Apple floundered for a long time and still survived. Microsoft will be able to do the same, at least for a little while.
You're right, cars that drive themselves will be cheaper the more that are made. That's not what I said. What I said was "any we could come up with today" which was a direct argument against your assertion that "we could have driverless cars" except for some notion of liability. I said you've obviously never worked with autonomous vehicles because the issues associated with a system like you propose are far from trivial and would be ridiculously expensive to implement even on a small scale, much less worldwide. If we had designed a system for it 60 years ago, sure, but using our current concept of cars and driving it simply won't work.
"And the money funds terrorists, right?" Making ridiculous statements doesn't help your argument at all. There is absolutely no part of my post that implies I believe that kind of crap. All I said was I know of no single person who isn't still doing drugs who claims they actually got inspiration from doing drugs. There have been plenty of people who suggested they thought at the time that they were getting "inspiration" from drugs, but later believe those works of inspiration to be lesser quality than work they accomplished sober. As for people not "admitting it" there are plenty of people who own up to their drug use, even if you aren't capable of it. As such, suggesting we have "special places" where people can use drugs to do whatever they want to be "inspired" to do is just another waste of money. Would it hurt? Probably not, in a controlled environment, but I don't see how it would help either.
"We have a tax system that punishes people who are successful in exploiting a new, innovate technology, all while allowing monumentally-stupid juries to assign obscene awards." Please explain to me how "abstract reasoning" has anything to do with the statement as you wrote it. Clearly the way you wrote the sentence implies it is part of the same thought process. If the two are unrelated, they should be separated into two sentences at the least and two paragraphs is generally the accepted practice of English grammar. Perhaps I was/am being pedantic.
For reference, I agree with your general point that we could be much further technologically and socially without political barriers. I do, however, recognize that we live in the real world and, whether we like it or not, we have to work within the realm of that reality.
I'm guessing you've never worked with any type of unmanned vehicle. Any "driverless cars" we could come up with today would be ridiculously expensive to the point that only governments (and not all of them) and people like Gates and Buffet would be able to afford any of them.
"Special facilities" where people can use drugs to get "inspiration"? Most people who think they have actually received inspiration are people still addicted to the drugs they were taking. If you speak with most former users, they will tell you most of their "inspiration" was not particularly inspiring. That said, there are exceptions out there, though I don't know of any.
I'm not sure how the tax system "punishes people who are successful in exploiting new, innovative technology" but even if it does, the tax system has nothing to do with stupid juries.
Nuclear power is cheap, and clean, but it isn't a permanent solution any more than any other single solution is.
Did you read my post at all? Seriously, if you're going to argue against my point, at least argue against the point I was making, not the one I specifically said I wasn't making. Again, I will repeat from my last post "fact that it doesn't do anything except waste a lot of money."
I've actually gone to several places where there were just domes, no cameras. Make people think they're being watched and it effectively has the same impact with little to no cost.
The cameras don't prevent any significant amount of crimes anyway.
Technically copyright doesn't apply to performance unless you're actually performing the work as created by the original artist. All you have to do is sing off key, play one note wrong or whatever and you're no longer in violation of copyright for a public performance. If you record the performance the rules change a bit. I don't know if using CCTV to record the performance with no audio would count though.
You seem to have missed the part where the GP says "I know friends and relatives over the years who where assaulted and have asked police to survey CCTV in order to catch the offenders. Usually there's some lame excuse about the camera not being on, pointing the wrong way, a technical fault or some equally daft reason."
The post wasn't about whether or not CCTV is heavily eroding your rights (which is debatable and not as cut and dried as you seem to suggest) but rather about the fact that it doesn't do anything except waste a lot of money. All that crap you see on TV about the cops tracking someone from camera to camera only happens in mass crimes like bombings. For every day crimes, like rape and mugging etc, the cops don't have the manpower or the desire to put forth that kind of effort. Even if they did, it wouldn't be in any reasonable time frame (it would take weeks at a minimum, not days) and it still wouldn't "revoke" the actual crime. Therefore, your public safety has not been enhanced in the slightest, which was the whole point of the GP's post.
Please tell me what car manufacturer puts out a "low end" model that is identical in features to it's "medium-priced" model except for looks.
Invariably the difference between low-end and medium is the differences in features consumers don't notice obviously. In computers it's weight and battery life. In cars it's interior sound quality, component quality (IE radios and seats) and little things like extra cigarette lighters/power plugs, and stuff like that.
Good design is most definitely worth 33% of the price of a product and is almost always the total difference between low-end and medium. Engineering and design is all about the trade-offs and should be a major impact to a final product.
If you honestly believe good design is "least expensive to a manufacturer" you've never priced labor for engineers and designers. Labor is almost always 50% (minimum) of the cost of any particular product being designed for the first time.
Fair enough, but that's still a 7 or 8 hour day including a lunch period (usually 30 minutes I believe.) That's less than most other professions work, not counting the fact that it's only 10 months out of the year (most teachers don't really get a full summer off.)
The pay sucks. The parents suck (as an average) for various reasons. That doesn't give people an excuse to say they have a hard life or work really hard. Especially anyone who's been teaching the same course for more than 2 or 3 years and accordingly don't spend nearly as much time planning lessons.
As a parent having to take time off from my own work to accommodate teachers who then teach my children the wrong information, I'll disagree that it's a bad thing. That's not to say that all teachers are bad, or that forcing them to do stuff "on their own time" is a good thing, but in general, I'd highly disagree that the quality of teaching is better now than 20 years ago.
Begging supplies or offering them out of their own pocket has always been fairly standard for teachers, but it's more noticeable now because it's more organized. Parent "teacher assistants" used to bring in supplies more often to supplement what teachers provided themselves, now schools just send home a list of "classroom" supplies with each student the first day of school.
You're right, the good teachers are still spending more time, but I have friends who complain that they have to actually teach 3 or 4 classes a day and they "don't have enough time" to grade the papers in the other 3-4 hours they have a day to do planning and grading. Then they also complain that they don't make enough money. I understand they have to deal with helicopter parents and absent parents and parents who expect them to be teaching the children discipline, but don't complain to me about a 7 hour day of which you only do your actual job (teaching) half of it.
Good points. I hadn't really considered compatibility issues, but I would think anyone who has taken the effort to actually make backups in the first place would have media (and appropriate readers) to minimize the impact of that particular problem.
As for the space issue, I know exactly how much data I'm backing up, and the application running the backup usually tells me, so I don't see how it's that difficult to "know for sure" but I may be missing something.
CDs and DVDs can both be permanently damaged, but so can any other backup media. Hard drives fail, RAID drives fail, there is no perfect solution, and that was my point.
None of these are particularly reliable either. Hard drives fail, WORM fails, tapes warp and stretch through use (causing failure) etc etc.
My point was that there is no "failure proof" back up mechanism other than regular backups to multiple types of media. Statistically, CDs and DVDs fail more regularly than hard drives I'm sure, but that doesn't imply that non-optical media are somehow bullet proof, which is what the GP seemed to be implying.
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The problem with knowing what he stood for, is that most people think (me included I must admit) that what he stands for is complete idiocy.
Because "separation of church and state" doesn't seem to matter to our unwashed masses. It's sad, really, that so many people think that a person's religion has some direct correlation to their ability to run a country, but we keep proving time and time again that we think it does.
So who decides that those "don't deserve"? Not everyone on welfare is on it by choice. Poor families don't want to live in shitty neighborhoods that aren't safe and where their children don't get the same quality education.
We have no "left" party in the United States. We have a moderate party with vaguely left leanings and a "conservative" party which really isn't much different except with respect to religious beliefs (currently) and a few other social issues. There is no longer (and hasn't been for a long time) a party of small government and "personal responsibility" that advocates not having social programs. If there was such a party they would have fought much harder to abolish Social Security, amongst many other programs. They wouldn't have instituted a "no child left behind" policy that brings the standard down for the whole so that a few can be pushed through the system whether they deserve to be or not.
Back to your point, "leftism" isn't bad, it's just not based entirely on greed. In fact, leftism, in theory, is getting back to the family unit, and extending that to helping people not directly related. The whole "we're only as strong as our weakest link" thing. It works on a small scale, but is unwieldy on a large scale, which is the real problem.
They control a dominant position in the market because they've been there for so long. Looking at the statistics though, they are hemorrhaging market share in the laptop world (which is where the future is) and are also losing share elsewhere, though not as quickly. Remember, nobody stays at the top forever. "The king is dead. Long live the king" and all that, though I think they've still got some life in them.
They're not down for the count but they need to do something soon to recover what they've already lost.
Apple has 10% of the overall market, but something like 40% of the new laptop market, if I remember correctly the stats I read recently. With more and more people moving to the laptop and mobile market, that does constitute a formidable giant, especially when you consider they've been around as long as MS and are gaining position, rather than losing it.
That said, it's a cyclical market, Apple floundered for a long time and still survived. Microsoft will be able to do the same, at least for a little while.
Your refrigerator is fine, just don't tell us about the ones in your shorts.
Read much into people's comments?
You're right, cars that drive themselves will be cheaper the more that are made. That's not what I said. What I said was "any we could come up with today" which was a direct argument against your assertion that "we could have driverless cars" except for some notion of liability. I said you've obviously never worked with autonomous vehicles because the issues associated with a system like you propose are far from trivial and would be ridiculously expensive to implement even on a small scale, much less worldwide. If we had designed a system for it 60 years ago, sure, but using our current concept of cars and driving it simply won't work.
"And the money funds terrorists, right?"
Making ridiculous statements doesn't help your argument at all. There is absolutely no part of my post that implies I believe that kind of crap. All I said was I know of no single person who isn't still doing drugs who claims they actually got inspiration from doing drugs. There have been plenty of people who suggested they thought at the time that they were getting "inspiration" from drugs, but later believe those works of inspiration to be lesser quality than work they accomplished sober. As for people not "admitting it" there are plenty of people who own up to their drug use, even if you aren't capable of it. As such, suggesting we have "special places" where people can use drugs to do whatever they want to be "inspired" to do is just another waste of money. Would it hurt? Probably not, in a controlled environment, but I don't see how it would help either.
"We have a tax system that punishes people who are successful in exploiting a new, innovate technology, all while allowing monumentally-stupid juries to assign obscene awards." Please explain to me how "abstract reasoning" has anything to do with the statement as you wrote it. Clearly the way you wrote the sentence implies it is part of the same thought process. If the two are unrelated, they should be separated into two sentences at the least and two paragraphs is generally the accepted practice of English grammar. Perhaps I was/am being pedantic.
For reference, I agree with your general point that we could be much further technologically and socially without political barriers. I do, however, recognize that we live in the real world and, whether we like it or not, we have to work within the realm of that reality.
I argue that all that knowledge will fit into a 5 GB/month plan.
In what format? Text? Not all knowledge is easily transferred through text alone.
I'm guessing you've never worked with any type of unmanned vehicle. Any "driverless cars" we could come up with today would be ridiculously expensive to the point that only governments (and not all of them) and people like Gates and Buffet would be able to afford any of them.
"Special facilities" where people can use drugs to get "inspiration"? Most people who think they have actually received inspiration are people still addicted to the drugs they were taking. If you speak with most former users, they will tell you most of their "inspiration" was not particularly inspiring. That said, there are exceptions out there, though I don't know of any.
I'm not sure how the tax system "punishes people who are successful in exploiting new, innovative technology" but even if it does, the tax system has nothing to do with stupid juries.
Nuclear power is cheap, and clean, but it isn't a permanent solution any more than any other single solution is.
The article specifically negates your account of how it sank. Read it and check out the videos...
Did you read my post at all? Seriously, if you're going to argue against my point, at least argue against the point I was making, not the one I specifically said I wasn't making. Again, I will repeat from my last post "fact that it doesn't do anything except waste a lot of money."
So I did, in fact, say it wasn't cost effective.
Heidi Klum? Halle Berry? Dare I say, Natalie Portman?
I've actually gone to several places where there were just domes, no cameras. Make people think they're being watched and it effectively has the same impact with little to no cost.
The cameras don't prevent any significant amount of crimes anyway.
Ah, damn edit preview screwed me. That's supposed to say "performing the work as created by the original artist" [IE playing a CD publicly]...
Technically copyright doesn't apply to performance unless you're actually performing the work as created by the original artist. All you have to do is sing off key, play one note wrong or whatever and you're no longer in violation of copyright for a public performance. If you record the performance the rules change a bit. I don't know if using CCTV to record the performance with no audio would count though.
You seem to have missed the part where the GP says "I know friends and relatives over the years who where assaulted and have asked police to survey CCTV in order to catch the offenders. Usually there's some lame excuse about the camera not being on, pointing the wrong way, a technical fault or some equally daft reason."
The post wasn't about whether or not CCTV is heavily eroding your rights (which is debatable and not as cut and dried as you seem to suggest) but rather about the fact that it doesn't do anything except waste a lot of money. All that crap you see on TV about the cops tracking someone from camera to camera only happens in mass crimes like bombings. For every day crimes, like rape and mugging etc, the cops don't have the manpower or the desire to put forth that kind of effort. Even if they did, it wouldn't be in any reasonable time frame (it would take weeks at a minimum, not days) and it still wouldn't "revoke" the actual crime. Therefore, your public safety has not been enhanced in the slightest, which was the whole point of the GP's post.
Did I miss something? I thought the exe was just an installer that installs the plugin for both IE and Firefox.
Please tell me what car manufacturer puts out a "low end" model that is identical in features to it's "medium-priced" model except for looks.
Invariably the difference between low-end and medium is the differences in features consumers don't notice obviously. In computers it's weight and battery life. In cars it's interior sound quality, component quality (IE radios and seats) and little things like extra cigarette lighters/power plugs, and stuff like that.
Good design is most definitely worth 33% of the price of a product and is almost always the total difference between low-end and medium. Engineering and design is all about the trade-offs and should be a major impact to a final product.
If you honestly believe good design is "least expensive to a manufacturer" you've never priced labor for engineers and designers. Labor is almost always 50% (minimum) of the cost of any particular product being designed for the first time.
More likely they'll be adding a new market segment of people who want small and cheap but a "known" (by people other than geeks) name brand.
Because the Vostro isn't small or lightweight! It's not all about cost, especially for today's consumer that wants ultra-portable too.
"rethink" does not automatically imply abolish.
Fair enough, but that's still a 7 or 8 hour day including a lunch period (usually 30 minutes I believe.) That's less than most other professions work, not counting the fact that it's only 10 months out of the year (most teachers don't really get a full summer off.)
The pay sucks. The parents suck (as an average) for various reasons. That doesn't give people an excuse to say they have a hard life or work really hard. Especially anyone who's been teaching the same course for more than 2 or 3 years and accordingly don't spend nearly as much time planning lessons.
As a parent having to take time off from my own work to accommodate teachers who then teach my children the wrong information, I'll disagree that it's a bad thing. That's not to say that all teachers are bad, or that forcing them to do stuff "on their own time" is a good thing, but in general, I'd highly disagree that the quality of teaching is better now than 20 years ago.
Begging supplies or offering them out of their own pocket has always been fairly standard for teachers, but it's more noticeable now because it's more organized. Parent "teacher assistants" used to bring in supplies more often to supplement what teachers provided themselves, now schools just send home a list of "classroom" supplies with each student the first day of school.
You're right, the good teachers are still spending more time, but I have friends who complain that they have to actually teach 3 or 4 classes a day and they "don't have enough time" to grade the papers in the other 3-4 hours they have a day to do planning and grading. Then they also complain that they don't make enough money. I understand they have to deal with helicopter parents and absent parents and parents who expect them to be teaching the children discipline, but don't complain to me about a 7 hour day of which you only do your actual job (teaching) half of it.
um win .1 couldn't run on a 286 it specifically needed a 386 or greater.
That's completely incorrect. I ran 3.1 and 3.11 for workgroups on a 286 in 94 and 95.
Good points. I hadn't really considered compatibility issues, but I would think anyone who has taken the effort to actually make backups in the first place would have media (and appropriate readers) to minimize the impact of that particular problem.
As for the space issue, I know exactly how much data I'm backing up, and the application running the backup usually tells me, so I don't see how it's that difficult to "know for sure" but I may be missing something.
CDs and DVDs can both be permanently damaged, but so can any other backup media. Hard drives fail, RAID drives fail, there is no perfect solution, and that was my point.
None of these are particularly reliable either. Hard drives fail, WORM fails, tapes warp and stretch through use (causing failure) etc etc.
My point was that there is no "failure proof" back up mechanism other than regular backups to multiple types of media. Statistically, CDs and DVDs fail more regularly than hard drives I'm sure, but that doesn't imply that non-optical media are somehow bullet proof, which is what the GP seemed to be implying.