Someone help me out here - I took ECON 201 about five years ago, and all I remember is those supply and demand curves.
It seems to me that lowering the taxes people pay (no matter how you do it - changing to federal sales tax, income tax cuts, etc.) will only lead to everyone having more money, which should directly lead to inflation to compensate for the effect. What am I missing here?
>I don't agree 100% that the brain makes digital decisions.
Not at the level of conscious thought, that is for sure.
However, at the level of the individual neurons, the response to a stimulus (whether to fire an action potential and at what frequency) are pretty much determined by the configuration of the cells and the electrochemistry of the cell membrane.
I think that the article just didn't make this clear.
so should/. become slashdot.com instead of slashdot.org because somebody is making money off of the ads?
setting up rules about what sites can own.org,.com, etc. will lead to whole heap of trouble in the future. this judge's decision is clearly a precident that is NOT good for the net.
I understand why this would be nice - it's easy to filter and recognize adult sites.
But it won't (and can't) prevent people from putting adult material on any other TLD. So what's the point? All the adults sites that exist now will (most likely) stay where they are.
What this means in laymans terms is that if you use Plan 9 ib any sort of business environment, including not for profit corporations, expect to pay bigtime for the honor.
What's so bad about that. They spent the money to develop it and now they are letting people play with it and see the source. Of course they aren't just going to give it away to everybody for anything.
>Imagine if your bank were to declare that your deposits with them were not physical, but electronic...
All the obvious legal issues aside, I would imagine that the bank would start losing customers pretty fast and probably wouldn't get much new business.
Everyone on this site is complaining about that clause but I haven't heard of one actual report of NSI taking away a domain name for their own use or to sell to someone else. The simple reason is because it would be bad business practice. People transfer domain names every day, some of them worth lots and lots of money, and NSI doesn't stop any of it from happening.
That clause is just legal backspeak to protect their asses. Everyone needs to calm down.
Uh, "first consumer" DVD recordable? I think Apple has had DVD-RAM options at their online store for several months now. It even comes standard on the upper models.
This is true. My father was going to be a chemist, but he couldn't pass the German language requirement, and this was at a college in Texas in the 1970's!!
And they should! Any English-speakers out there who have taken a Latin or Greek course know what profound insights about Western culture and history are accessible through language.
I think it would be a tragedy if the whole world were to end up speaking one language.
Watching "A Baby Story" can make you weepy and want to have children!
Watching sports can raise your heart rate!
Watching Burger King commercials can make you hungry!
Playing video games can make you more aggressive!
The 'scientists' who publish such nonsensical 'scientific' studies need to be more careful about stuff like this. This is obviously media-pandering and a means to get attention. Give me a break...
I believe (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong) that the PowerPC people are reverse engineering what they need, without any help from Apple (the chip isn't the problem, it's the motherboard - Apple won't release those specs).
The BeOS team has decided not to reverse engineer everything and then have Apple change the specs and break everything again.
In short, it could be done, but it's Apple, not Be, that is preventing it.
>Want some new mp3's? Just get on the PS2 and download from internet to harddrive.
errrm, seeing as sony is also in the entertainment/music industry, i'm not sure they would like people using mp3's on the PS2. they may have some other things in mind, like saving game setting and such, but i doubt they'll make it easy to play mp3's from this thing.
Thank you for your comments. I do agree with some of your points.
I want to point out that I am not arguing that the media in general is 'better' or more diverse or whatever now than it was then. I think the media has and always will be biased, towards specific nations, towards corporations, towards politicians, towards its readership, etc. This is inescapable. For a good example of this, take a look at today's Salon articles. The newspapers in Miami aren't reporting that some of the Miami relatives have criminal pasts. Why? Because a large portion of their readership is from Cuba, many of their advertisements come from Cuban-owned companies, etc.
The point is that the source of your information is at least as important as the information itself. That being said, I understand your point that many (who knows what the number might be) people just click on their AOL icon and blindly trust whatever shows up on their homepage. I agree this is a problem, and I have no idea what to do about it.
AOL hasn't really done anything wrong, and who knows if they will? And if they do do something wrong, who's going to report on it? This is all very sticky...
>In his day, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst was considered by many to be more powerful than the U.S. President, and he didn't have a fraction of the information control Time-Warner has now...
I don't buy this for a second. How many sources of media and news did people then have compared to now? I would argue that they have _many_ more now.
>My personal fear of giant corporate voices controlling the Internet as a news medium is based not only on their potential political influence, but also on their ability to stifle innovation online. Do you think Rob Malda and Jeff Bates would ever have been allowed to do their schtick on AOL or through Time-Warner?
No, but who says they have to? Just because AOL/TW has huge market share doesn't mean that small, independent, special-interest sites can't become successful. In fact, one could argue that AOL is contributing to their success by getting millions of users onto the net who would never have been there before.
>The section of Time-Warner's online empire for which I used to write was Netly News...
Here's a question: Did TW ever try and influence how _you_ wrote your articles? Just because AOL owns CNN doesn't mean they can dictate what the reporters say and do, for the most part. I would argue that the integrity of Wolf Blitzer, Christian Amanpour, etc. will not be changed, and that if some corporation tried to control how they did their job they would scream bloody murder. (Of course, there are exceptions; reporters can be pressured into which stories to write, news can be edited to give it a slant, etc. etc. One example I can think of is the whole 60 Minutes/Tobacco story recently made famous in The Insider. But note that what happened: The producer stood up for what was ethically [in his profession] right to do, and CBS had some serious egg on their faces, and they suffered for it.)
This article strikes me as sort of Jon Katz-ish, the world is coming to an end, oh-my Big-Brother article. I don't buy any of it. If I don't like the way CNN is reporting, I'll change the channel. I guarantee you that CNN and NBC/CBS/ABC/etc. aren't all conspiring with AOL.
I think the most significant argument against this guy is that Linux virii are just not common. The number of Linux users is growing at an exponential rate at the moment, and yet (besides the general lapses in security management) virii have not been a problem.
That's great for high-bandwidth devices, and I'm sure the switch will come naturally, as consumers demand it.
However, there is no need whatsoever for super-high bandwidth keyboards and mice. USB is the perfect spec for this, and it will be around for quite a while.
So just switching to firewire won't solve the problem.
LL
Re:Reversing cause and effect
on
LonelyNet
·
· Score: 3
This is an excellent point. It seems that maybe the researchers have fallen into a statistical trap.
Repeat after me: Correlation does not imply causation.
If you want a little more background on quantum physics and how it (possibly) relates to some of the Eastern religions, try reading The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra.
For a Darwinian/evolutionary approach to the human mind, consciousness, and morality, try The Moral Animal by Robert Wright.
I could write for pages about these two books, but since this is just a book review article...
My _guess_ is that they don't really want to make money right now. From the little I remember of my Accounting 101 class, companies have several years to prove they can make a profit. It is therefore to their advantage to _avoid_ a profit for the first few years, avoid paying taxes on any income, and build their business up. This of course will have to change within the next two or three years, but for now, they are tax-free.
I've seen a bunch of posts claiming that even if MS is broken up into these three separate companies, they will each still have a monopoly in their own market space.
That's not the point. Monopolies aren't illegal. MS broke the law by unfairly using its monopoly power, not by having one. If OS, apps, and internet are all separate companies, they can't join together and force new products down our throats while preventing the competition from entering the market.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone help me out here - I took ECON 201 about five years ago, and all I remember is those supply and demand curves.
It seems to me that lowering the taxes people pay (no matter how you do it - changing to federal sales tax, income tax cuts, etc.) will only lead to everyone having more money, which should directly lead to inflation to compensate for the effect. What am I missing here?
LL
>I don't agree 100% that the brain makes digital decisions.
Not at the level of conscious thought, that is for sure.
However, at the level of the individual neurons, the response to a stimulus (whether to fire an action potential and at what frequency) are pretty much determined by the configuration of the cells and the electrochemistry of the cell membrane.
I think that the article just didn't make this clear.
LL
it should be a .com
/. become slashdot.com instead of slashdot.org because somebody is making money off of the ads?
.org, .com, etc. will lead to whole heap of trouble in the future. this judge's decision is clearly a precident that is NOT good for the net.
so should
setting up rules about what sites can own
LL
But how do you "require" anyone on the net to do anything at all?
As soon as you start limiting what content can be put on each domain, the internet as we know it is gone.
LL
I understand why this would be nice - it's easy to filter and recognize adult sites.
But it won't (and can't) prevent people from putting adult material on any other TLD. So what's the point? All the adults sites that exist now will (most likely) stay where they are.
LL
And don't forget that all of this will be for naught when good ole' boy GW gets elected and has the Justice Department drop the case entirely...
Yikes.
LL
And for those looking to install Linux on just about any laptop under the sun, the Linux on Laptops homepage is the place to look.
LL
I detect some bitterness in your post...
What this means in laymans terms is that if you use Plan 9 ib any sort of business environment, including not for profit corporations, expect to pay bigtime for the honor.
What's so bad about that. They spent the money to develop it and now they are letting people play with it and see the source. Of course they aren't just going to give it away to everybody for anything.
>Imagine if your bank were to declare that your deposits with them were not physical, but electronic...
All the obvious legal issues aside, I would imagine that the bank would start losing customers pretty fast and probably wouldn't get much new business.
Everyone on this site is complaining about that clause but I haven't heard of one actual report of NSI taking away a domain name for their own use or to sell to someone else. The simple reason is because it would be bad business practice. People transfer domain names every day, some of them worth lots and lots of money, and NSI doesn't stop any of it from happening.
That clause is just legal backspeak to protect their asses. Everyone needs to calm down.
LL
Uh, "first consumer" DVD recordable? I think Apple has had DVD-RAM options at their online store for several months now. It even comes standard on the upper models.
LL
This is true. My father was going to be a chemist, but he couldn't pass the German language requirement, and this was at a college in Texas in the 1970's!!
LL
>That is how languages go. They resist control.
And they should! Any English-speakers out there who have taken a Latin or Greek course know what profound insights about Western culture and history are accessible through language.
I think it would be a tragedy if the whole world were to end up speaking one language.
LL
This just in!
Watching "A Baby Story" can make you weepy and want to have children!
Watching sports can raise your heart rate!
Watching Burger King commercials can make you hungry!
Playing video games can make you more aggressive!
The 'scientists' who publish such nonsensical 'scientific' studies need to be more careful about stuff like this. This is obviously media-pandering and a means to get attention. Give me a break...
LL
I believe (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong) that the PowerPC people are reverse engineering what they need, without any help from Apple (the chip isn't the problem, it's the motherboard - Apple won't release those specs).
The BeOS team has decided not to reverse engineer everything and then have Apple change the specs and break everything again.
In short, it could be done, but it's Apple, not Be, that is preventing it.
LL
>Want some new mp3's? Just get on the PS2 and download from internet to harddrive.
errrm, seeing as sony is also in the entertainment/music industry, i'm not sure they would like people using mp3's on the PS2. they may have some other things in mind, like saving game setting and such, but i doubt they'll make it easy to play mp3's from this thing.
LL
crush-
Thank you for your comments. I do agree with some of your points.
I want to point out that I am not arguing that the media in general is 'better' or more diverse or whatever now than it was then. I think the media has and always will be biased, towards specific nations, towards corporations, towards politicians, towards its readership, etc. This is inescapable. For a good example of this, take a look at today's Salon articles. The newspapers in Miami aren't reporting that some of the Miami relatives have criminal pasts. Why? Because a large portion of their readership is from Cuba, many of their advertisements come from Cuban-owned companies, etc.
The point is that the source of your information is at least as important as the information itself. That being said, I understand your point that many (who knows what the number might be) people just click on their AOL icon and blindly trust whatever shows up on their homepage. I agree this is a problem, and I have no idea what to do about it.
AOL hasn't really done anything wrong, and who knows if they will? And if they do do something wrong, who's going to report on it? This is all very sticky...
LL
>In his day, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst was considered by many to be more powerful than the U.S. President, and he didn't have a fraction of the information control Time-Warner has now...
I don't buy this for a second. How many sources of media and news did people then have compared to now? I would argue that they have _many_ more now.
>My personal fear of giant corporate voices controlling the Internet as a news medium is based not only on their potential political influence, but also on their ability to stifle innovation online. Do you think Rob Malda and Jeff Bates would ever have been allowed to do their schtick on AOL or through Time-Warner?
No, but who says they have to? Just because AOL/TW has huge market share doesn't mean that small, independent, special-interest sites can't become successful. In fact, one could argue that AOL is contributing to their success by getting millions of users onto the net who would never have been there before.
>The section of Time-Warner's online empire for which I used to write was Netly News...
Here's a question: Did TW ever try and influence how _you_ wrote your articles? Just because AOL owns CNN doesn't mean they can dictate what the reporters say and do, for the most part. I would argue that the integrity of Wolf Blitzer, Christian Amanpour, etc. will not be changed, and that if some corporation tried to control how they did their job they would scream bloody murder. (Of course, there are exceptions; reporters can be pressured into which stories to write, news can be edited to give it a slant, etc. etc. One example I can think of is the whole 60 Minutes/Tobacco story recently made famous in The Insider. But note that what happened: The producer stood up for what was ethically [in his profession] right to do, and CBS had some serious egg on their faces, and they suffered for it.)
This article strikes me as sort of Jon Katz-ish, the world is coming to an end, oh-my Big-Brother article. I don't buy any of it. If I don't like the way CNN is reporting, I'll change the channel. I guarantee you that CNN and NBC/CBS/ABC/etc. aren't all conspiring with AOL.
LL
I think the most significant argument against this guy is that Linux virii are just not common. The number of Linux users is growing at an exponential rate at the moment, and yet (besides the general lapses in security management) virii have not been a problem.
LL
>The entire idea behind USB is to kill off PCI.
Maybe you mean PS/2? or serial ports?
LL
That's great for high-bandwidth devices, and I'm sure the switch will come naturally, as consumers demand it.
However, there is no need whatsoever for super-high bandwidth keyboards and mice. USB is the perfect spec for this, and it will be around for quite a while.
So just switching to firewire won't solve the problem.
LL
This is an excellent point. It seems that maybe the researchers have fallen into a statistical trap.
Repeat after me:
Correlation does not imply causation.
LL
If you want a little more background on quantum physics and how it (possibly) relates to some of the Eastern religions, try reading The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra.
For a Darwinian/evolutionary approach to the human mind, consciousness, and morality, try The Moral Animal by Robert Wright.
I could write for pages about these two books, but since this is just a book review article...
Remember to buy from here.
LL
Advertising revenues.
They may not be able to control what is posted, but they do own the site, and they will make money from that little banner ad at the top of the page.
LL
My _guess_ is that they don't really want to make money right now. From the little I remember of my Accounting 101 class, companies have several years to prove they can make a profit. It is therefore to their advantage to _avoid_ a profit for the first few years, avoid paying taxes on any income, and build their business up. This of course will have to change within the next two or three years, but for now, they are tax-free.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please...
LL
I've seen a bunch of posts claiming that even if MS is broken up into these three separate companies, they will each still have a monopoly in their own market space.
That's not the point. Monopolies aren't illegal. MS broke the law by unfairly using its monopoly power, not by having one. If OS, apps, and internet are all separate companies, they can't join together and force new products down our throats while preventing the competition from entering the market.
LL