Network transparency is very useful for administering servers
Which is fine if you want Linux to be purely a server OS. If you want Linux to have any success in other markets, then having a smooth graphical user experience is almost always more important than remote GUI admin capabilities.
What's wrong with retaining X11 for servers only, and switching to something more appropriate for other Linux installations?
In Linux I have more control over font rendering and sub-pixel hinting.
A couple years ago I tried out a few Linux distributions, and font rendering was the one thing that I just couldn't get to work satisfactorily no matter how I tried. Even following instructions to recompile freetype with hinting and subpixel rendering, and using the Microsoft core fonts, it looked like ass compared to Windows ClearType. Is there now a way to get Linux fonts to render exactly the same as on Windows? I know a lot of Linux users prefer the blurry, non-snapped look, and some even prefer no antialiasing at all (!) but when I tried Linux out and opened the web browser, I couldn't even concentrate on reading the text because it hurt my eyes.
Because it would complete with Samsung's own tablets that sell for $599.
Which Samsung tablet starts at $599? The Galaxy Note 10.1, currently Samsung's premium tablet product, has a base price of $499. Of course extra flash memory and a cellular modem will cost more... we were talking about base prices.
If it's $329, I don't see who their target audience is. People who specifically want an iPad already have one; this isn't much of a price drop compared to the iPad 2. People who want a 7-inch tablet can get the Nexus 7 for much cheaper, and unlike the first generation of Android tablets, that device has actually received good reviews and works well for most people.
Selling the iPad Mini at $329 would basically be bringing back the old Apple price premium. Due to good supply chain management, that had been pretty much whittled down – you can't buy a good smartphone for much cheaper than the iPhone, and 10-inch Android tablets aren't much cheaper than the iPad (and no current Android tablet matches the iPad 3's resolution, though that is set to change soon). Apple has been successful in the portable device market not because of fanboys, but because they sold good devices at a competitive price. But $329 for a 7-inch tablet is not close to being competitive – unless they have a surprise (Retina display?) in store.
It looks like Google will be adding some models next week - Nexus 10, with an extremely high resolution screen for less than $300
The current word is that the Google/Samsung joint venture tablet will have a 2560x1600 screen resolution. Awesome if true, but I can't imagine them getting that out at a $300 price point. More likely it will be the same price as the iPad 3 (starting at $499). Even so, it will probably restore competitiveness at the high end of the tablet market, which is a good thing.
Google's new ARM-powered Chromebook isn't a lot of things: it isn't a full-fledged laptop, it's not a tablet (doesn't even have a touch screen); and by design it's not very good as a stand-alone device. Eric Lai at ZDNet, though, thinks Chromebooks are (with the price drop that accompanies the newest version) a good fit for business customers, at least "for white-collar employees and other workers who rarely stray away from their corporate campus and its Wi-Fi network." Lai lists some interesting large-scale rollouts with Chromebooks, including 19,000 of them in a South Carolina school district. Schools probably especially like the control that ChromeOS means for the laptops they administer.
In other words, no one would voluntarily choose to use a Chromebook over a real laptop, but there is a good chance that they will be shoved down people's throats in various environments by control freaks. (Dumb control freaks who distrust their own employees/students, but apparently trust Google completely to not abuse their data.)
This may get Google some sales, but probably not as many as they think: legacy lock-in is powerful, and most businesses and other group environments have at least one program they need to use that only runs on Windows. (Wake me up when a Chromebook can run Photoshop.) But it may hurt their business in other ways. Does Google really want the reputation of the company whose products you use because you have to? Isn't that what Microsoft has been trying to get away from?
Which incidentally is exactly why Microsoft is so worried about Android and iOS becoming the consumer standard for desktop / laptop. That is why their Win8 strategy makes sense, they don't want to be in RIM's position in 2022.
Bad analogy. RIM didn't have the advantage of massive legacy lock-in. The reason people use Windows isn't that it is better than Linux or OSX in some platonic sense; it's because Windows runs everything they have, and the other desktop OSes don't. The fact that just about everyone in the business world is trained on Windows (and usually not on Linux or OSX) also helps.
Microsoft's position is a lot more secure than RIM's, and their Windows 8 strategy is actually a threat to that position because it alienates their core demographics.
And this is why the Metro push is an abuse of monopoly power, and should never have been permitted. Microsoft is trying to use their existing desktop monopoly to leverage extra market share in a different field (tablets and smartphones), using the new Metro API as a weapon, and degrading customer experience in the process. This should have been stopped by the FTC and European Union before it reached the point of release.
And I would submit that this is intentional. The more the waters are muddied about the differences between the two operating systems, the larger the potential launch volume. And then you have a bunch of people out there who already own the product and are trying to make it work, giving additional motivation to vendors to port to it.
The more likely result is a bunch of angry customers returning their Surface RT devices to the store after finding that they don't do what they thought they would.
Apple never used the Macintosh or MacOS branding in conjunction with the iPhone or iPad. In contrast, Microsoft insists on misleadingly using the same OS name – Windows – for both products.
The idea that "a little inflation is good, a lot is bad, and negative is very bad" is a well known gospel.
Can anyone here explain why this is without telling a story?
Economics is a social science, not a hard science. Playing around with numbers and equations doesn't change that. We ultimately have to go with what history shows us, which is indeed that a little inflation is good, a lot is bad, and negative (deflation) is very bad.
I'm not sure there will be much of a backlash on this. Maybe. It depends on how confused people are. But really I think Apple has helped to set the stage for people to accept this sort of thing, since the iPad similarly runs a modified version of OSX that doesn't run normal OSX applications.
But Apple didn't use the Macintosh brand name for its iOS devices. Microsoft is setting itself up for confusion by claiming that its ARM devices run "Windows" when there is no backwards compatibility at all.
This is completely unaccurate. Windows RT supports applications build using WinRT, which is the planned substitute for the current Win32 API.
What I said was completely accurate. No existing Windows applications will run on WinRT, since WinRT does not support any of the existing APIs (Win32 or.NET Framework). Nor can existing applications be made to run with just a recompile. The entire user interface needs to be rewritten and then they need to go through the MS Store (no sideloading allowed). And they will only be able to use Metro - not the standard desktop interface.
Current desktop applications are build upon WIN32, but as time passes more applications will run on both OS, because they will be using WinRT.
That's a very optimistic view. WinRT applications won't run on any existing version of Windows, so Microsoft faces a chicken-and-egg problem. Porting an existing app to WinRT is no less difficult than porting it to Android or iOS, so why would anyone want to do this for a new, unproven platform that most of the IT world hates?
The fact remains: You can't write an app that runs on both Windows 7 and WinRT with just a recompile. You have to do two completely different UIs. So for all intents and purposes, Surface does not run "Windows" at all.
The UN has made its decision; now let it enforce it.
Seriously: there is nothing the UN can do about actions undertaken by private parties. They don't have any police force, much less an army. Now, if the actions violated Canadian law, that might be something that Mr. George actually has to worry about. But violating a resolution of the UN has no more effect than violating a resolution of your local university faculty senate. They are a talking shop, nothing more.
If they are keeping the Tegra3 and 2GB of memory, which I've read of before, the MS tablets have some advantages over the iPad3.
The Surface will only have a 1280x720 display, compared to the iPad's 2048x1536 – and the Surface actually has a *larger* screen. That's a huge difference, apparent at first glance – anyone with 20/20 eyesight can see the massive advantage of the iPad 3 over a low-DPI tablet. In contrast, the processor and RAM advantages of the Surface are buried in a spec sheet and will not even be noticed by most prospective buyers (who, remember, aren't all geeks and in many cases wouldn't know what Tegra 3 even meant.) Besides, who knows if some of that extra capacity is necessary just to run WinRT? There's no telling if it is as streamlined as Android and iOS – they may have had to throw hardware at it just to get it up to par.
You're right, when it comes to the consumer market. But Microsoft is still firmly entrenched in business. I predict large corporations will eat up Microsoft's new tablet.
Why? It doesn't offer them any real ecosystem advantages (which is one of the truly dumb things about it – you'd think that MS could at least get *that* part right). The WinRT-based Surface tablet doesn't join to Active Directory domains. The included version of Office is stripped-down and doesn't support some of the features (e.g. VBA macros) that many businesses use as part of their existing processes. It can sync with Exchange, but so can almost any other portable device. It doesn't run existing applications (and they can't even be recompiled since only MS is allowed to develop on the WinRT desktop), so businesses will still need to keep laptops and workstations for that reason. What advantage do businesses get out of Surface over going with more popular, better-known, and equally priced alternatives like the iPad?
I will probably buy one of these. They run Windows. They have a USB port. They will run a piece of software I want to run that will not run on IOS or Android, although it also has a version for OS-X.
No, they won't!
Windows RT is *not* Windows. It's a new operating system for ARM processors that is designed to look and feel like Windows, and shares some of the original code base. It has no backwards compatibility with existing Windows applications. Just in case I didn't make that clear, it will *NOT* run *ANY* existing desktop Windows applications. In fact, you can't even recompile or write new desktop application for WinRT. There is a desktop, but it's only allowed to run a few programs, such as Microsoft Office. (Why the FTC is letting them get away with that blatantly anti-competitive decision is beyond me.) Oh, and WinRT can't join domains either, so businesses won't be interested in using it.
If you want to run existing Windows software, you'll have to wait for the x86-based Surface *Pro*, which will set you back nearly a thousand bucks. *That* will indeed be basically a PC in a tablet form factor, and compatible with the usual Windows ecosystem stuff.
Microsoft is setting itself up for a massive backlash with this device. If Slashdot readers are thinking this way ("it's Windows, it will run my software") then how many ordinary users will make the same mistake? They will not be well disposed towards Microsoft products after that experience, I guarantee you.
This is irrational thinking. Executing him won't bring her back. Locking him up will prevent him from committing further crimes. You're engaging in a version of the sunk cost fallacy.
Our current regulations for cars in the US are quite strict. They got started for a good reason (prior to regulation, the companies actually had a collusive agreement *not* to bring new safety features to market), but we're reaching the point of diminishing returns. (Mandatory tire pressure monitoring sensors? Really?) It's actually a testament to human ingenuity that new cars in America can be brought to market as cheaply as they currently are.
But there has to be something to fill the gap. Currently we allow regular cars, which bristle with safety features... and motorcycles, which have essentially no safety features at all. This seems bizarre; a car design from 1990 is far, far safer than a motorcycle, but we wouldn't allow the former to be manufactured and sold as a new product today, while the latter is just fine.
What I'd propose is a new category: city cars. These would have a maximum speed of 55 MPH and would not be permitted on interstates. (On limited-access state roads, it would be up to the traffic authorities to decide if they are allowed or not.) From a safety standpoint, they would be treated pretty much like motorcycles: anything goes. No airbag requirements, no ABS requirements, nothing. Consequently, they could be much, much cheaper than normal cars. For people who have a commute that doesn't require going on the highway, this could be a very economical alternative. And at low speeds, safety becomes less of a concern.
I know that the Neighborhood Electric Vehicle classification is similar, but that only applies to electric (not gas) vehicles, and they can only go on roads with speed limits of 35 MPH or less, which means you can't really use them for much of anything in the real world.
Broken window fallacy. Throwing something away that still has economic value does not boost the economy. Why don't we just bury dollars in Yucca mountain?
The broken-window "fallacy" is only a fallacy if the economy is running at full capacity. If there is a demand slump, then juicing demand (by whatever means) can help to break out of it. A hell of a lot of windows were broken during WWII, and guess what? It ended the Great Depression permanently.
Are you crazy? New cars are ego driven decisions and you NEVER come out ahead over years of use. It's the first mile that kills you.
That used to be the case, but it's not anymore. Check out the price of a 2-year-old Honda or Toyota compared to a new one of the same model and trim. The difference is usually not that substantial. The adage that a car loses most of its value when you drive it off the lot was formulated in the days of 1970s rustbuckets.
Yes, if you're willing to buy an old junker and have the skills to do some of the maintenance yourself, you can save a few bucks. But don't forget to factor in the opportunity cost of all those hours you're spending trawling through junkyards and wielding a torque wrench. And your old car also won't be as safe as a new vehicle.
The Lords' program was called "Cash for Clunkers," and it took ~700,000 used cars off the market by literally destroying the engines intentionally (by pouring some powder directly into the engine and running it until died).
The only cars eligible for destruction under cash-for-clunkers were those that had "a weighted combined average rating of 18 or fewer miles per gallon". (See this Wikipedia article for details.) These are the vehicles that should be off the roads.
Cash-for-clunkers provided a rebate of $3,500 to $4,500. This allowed some low-income buyers to purchase new vehicles which they could not have afforded before. The total price of a cheap new car, after the discount, could have been under $10,000.
The reason why there are fewer cheap used cars isn't because of cash-for-clunkers; it's because cars today are made to a higher standard than they ever have before. It used to be that a 3-year-old car had lost a majority of its value, because reliability was so poor. Today, a 3-year-old car holds its value much better, because it's a higher-quality product.
Can we please have one, just one, operating system that isn't designed for touchy crap? Look, tablets and smartphones are great, but when I'm on the desktop, I want an OS designed expressly for the desktop, not compromised with a bunch of tablet nonsense.
By all accounts, Innocence of Muslims is worthless tripe. But we cannot permit even this sort of stuff to be censored, because we know it will not stop there. The same groups of people who were rioting over Nakoula's amateurish film were also up in arms about Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, a serious work of literature. And more recently, British broadcaster Channel 4 cancelled a planned public viewing of Tom Holland's Islam: The Untold Story because of "security fears". Holland's work was a serious contribution to the study of Islamic history, and Holland is actually quite respectful of Islam, which he considers a moral advance over the polytheism that preceded it. But since he questioned the canonical story of Muhammad and the official history of Islam's origin (just as Christian scholars have been doing with the Bible and church history for centuries), far too many Muslims simply couldn't abide that.
We cannot, must not, allow the precedent that if you yell loud enough and threaten enough violence that you can silence your opponents.
Slashdot Mirror
Network transparency is very useful for administering servers
Which is fine if you want Linux to be purely a server OS. If you want Linux to have any success in other markets, then having a smooth graphical user experience is almost always more important than remote GUI admin capabilities.
What's wrong with retaining X11 for servers only, and switching to something more appropriate for other Linux installations?
In Linux I have more control over font rendering and sub-pixel hinting.
A couple years ago I tried out a few Linux distributions, and font rendering was the one thing that I just couldn't get to work satisfactorily no matter how I tried. Even following instructions to recompile freetype with hinting and subpixel rendering, and using the Microsoft core fonts, it looked like ass compared to Windows ClearType. Is there now a way to get Linux fonts to render exactly the same as on Windows? I know a lot of Linux users prefer the blurry, non-snapped look, and some even prefer no antialiasing at all (!) but when I tried Linux out and opened the web browser, I couldn't even concentrate on reading the text because it hurt my eyes.
Because it would complete with Samsung's own tablets that sell for $599.
Which Samsung tablet starts at $599? The Galaxy Note 10.1, currently Samsung's premium tablet product, has a base price of $499. Of course extra flash memory and a cellular modem will cost more... we were talking about base prices.
If it's $329, I don't see who their target audience is. People who specifically want an iPad already have one; this isn't much of a price drop compared to the iPad 2. People who want a 7-inch tablet can get the Nexus 7 for much cheaper, and unlike the first generation of Android tablets, that device has actually received good reviews and works well for most people.
Selling the iPad Mini at $329 would basically be bringing back the old Apple price premium. Due to good supply chain management, that had been pretty much whittled down – you can't buy a good smartphone for much cheaper than the iPhone, and 10-inch Android tablets aren't much cheaper than the iPad (and no current Android tablet matches the iPad 3's resolution, though that is set to change soon). Apple has been successful in the portable device market not because of fanboys, but because they sold good devices at a competitive price. But $329 for a 7-inch tablet is not close to being competitive – unless they have a surprise (Retina display?) in store.
It looks like Google will be adding some models next week - Nexus 10, with an extremely high resolution screen for less than $300
The current word is that the Google/Samsung joint venture tablet will have a 2560x1600 screen resolution. Awesome if true, but I can't imagine them getting that out at a $300 price point. More likely it will be the same price as the iPad 3 (starting at $499). Even so, it will probably restore competitiveness at the high end of the tablet market, which is a good thing.
Google's new ARM-powered Chromebook isn't a lot of things: it isn't a full-fledged laptop, it's not a tablet (doesn't even have a touch screen); and by design it's not very good as a stand-alone device. Eric Lai at ZDNet, though, thinks Chromebooks are (with the price drop that accompanies the newest version) a good fit for business customers, at least "for white-collar employees and other workers who rarely stray away from their corporate campus and its Wi-Fi network." Lai lists some interesting large-scale rollouts with Chromebooks, including 19,000 of them in a South Carolina school district. Schools probably especially like the control that ChromeOS means for the laptops they administer.
In other words, no one would voluntarily choose to use a Chromebook over a real laptop, but there is a good chance that they will be shoved down people's throats in various environments by control freaks. (Dumb control freaks who distrust their own employees/students, but apparently trust Google completely to not abuse their data.)
This may get Google some sales, but probably not as many as they think: legacy lock-in is powerful, and most businesses and other group environments have at least one program they need to use that only runs on Windows. (Wake me up when a Chromebook can run Photoshop.) But it may hurt their business in other ways. Does Google really want the reputation of the company whose products you use because you have to? Isn't that what Microsoft has been trying to get away from?
Which incidentally is exactly why Microsoft is so worried about Android and iOS becoming the consumer standard for desktop / laptop. That is why their Win8 strategy makes sense, they don't want to be in RIM's position in 2022.
Bad analogy. RIM didn't have the advantage of massive legacy lock-in. The reason people use Windows isn't that it is better than Linux or OSX in some platonic sense; it's because Windows runs everything they have, and the other desktop OSes don't. The fact that just about everyone in the business world is trained on Windows (and usually not on Linux or OSX) also helps.
Microsoft's position is a lot more secure than RIM's, and their Windows 8 strategy is actually a threat to that position because it alienates their core demographics.
And this is why the Metro push is an abuse of monopoly power, and should never have been permitted. Microsoft is trying to use their existing desktop monopoly to leverage extra market share in a different field (tablets and smartphones), using the new Metro API as a weapon, and degrading customer experience in the process. This should have been stopped by the FTC and European Union before it reached the point of release.
And I would submit that this is intentional. The more the waters are muddied about the differences between the two operating systems, the larger the potential launch volume. And then you have a bunch of people out there who already own the product and are trying to make it work, giving additional motivation to vendors to port to it.
The more likely result is a bunch of angry customers returning their Surface RT devices to the store after finding that they don't do what they thought they would.
Apple never used the Macintosh or MacOS branding in conjunction with the iPhone or iPad. In contrast, Microsoft insists on misleadingly using the same OS name – Windows – for both products.
The idea that "a little inflation is good, a lot is bad, and negative is very bad" is a well known gospel. Can anyone here explain why this is without telling a story?
Economics is a social science, not a hard science. Playing around with numbers and equations doesn't change that. We ultimately have to go with what history shows us, which is indeed that a little inflation is good, a lot is bad, and negative (deflation) is very bad.
I'm not sure there will be much of a backlash on this. Maybe. It depends on how confused people are. But really I think Apple has helped to set the stage for people to accept this sort of thing, since the iPad similarly runs a modified version of OSX that doesn't run normal OSX applications.
But Apple didn't use the Macintosh brand name for its iOS devices. Microsoft is setting itself up for confusion by claiming that its ARM devices run "Windows" when there is no backwards compatibility at all.
This is completely unaccurate. Windows RT supports applications build using WinRT, which is the planned substitute for the current Win32 API.
What I said was completely accurate. No existing Windows applications will run on WinRT, since WinRT does not support any of the existing APIs (Win32 or .NET Framework). Nor can existing applications be made to run with just a recompile. The entire user interface needs to be rewritten and then they need to go through the MS Store (no sideloading allowed). And they will only be able to use Metro - not the standard desktop interface.
Current desktop applications are build upon WIN32, but as time passes more applications will run on both OS, because they will be using WinRT.
That's a very optimistic view. WinRT applications won't run on any existing version of Windows, so Microsoft faces a chicken-and-egg problem. Porting an existing app to WinRT is no less difficult than porting it to Android or iOS, so why would anyone want to do this for a new, unproven platform that most of the IT world hates?
The fact remains: You can't write an app that runs on both Windows 7 and WinRT with just a recompile. You have to do two completely different UIs. So for all intents and purposes, Surface does not run "Windows" at all.
The UN has made its decision; now let it enforce it.
Seriously: there is nothing the UN can do about actions undertaken by private parties. They don't have any police force, much less an army. Now, if the actions violated Canadian law, that might be something that Mr. George actually has to worry about. But violating a resolution of the UN has no more effect than violating a resolution of your local university faculty senate. They are a talking shop, nothing more.
If they are keeping the Tegra3 and 2GB of memory, which I've read of before, the MS tablets have some advantages over the iPad3.
The Surface will only have a 1280x720 display, compared to the iPad's 2048x1536 – and the Surface actually has a *larger* screen. That's a huge difference, apparent at first glance – anyone with 20/20 eyesight can see the massive advantage of the iPad 3 over a low-DPI tablet. In contrast, the processor and RAM advantages of the Surface are buried in a spec sheet and will not even be noticed by most prospective buyers (who, remember, aren't all geeks and in many cases wouldn't know what Tegra 3 even meant.) Besides, who knows if some of that extra capacity is necessary just to run WinRT? There's no telling if it is as streamlined as Android and iOS – they may have had to throw hardware at it just to get it up to par.
You're right, when it comes to the consumer market. But Microsoft is still firmly entrenched in business. I predict large corporations will eat up Microsoft's new tablet.
Why? It doesn't offer them any real ecosystem advantages (which is one of the truly dumb things about it – you'd think that MS could at least get *that* part right). The WinRT-based Surface tablet doesn't join to Active Directory domains. The included version of Office is stripped-down and doesn't support some of the features (e.g. VBA macros) that many businesses use as part of their existing processes. It can sync with Exchange, but so can almost any other portable device. It doesn't run existing applications (and they can't even be recompiled since only MS is allowed to develop on the WinRT desktop), so businesses will still need to keep laptops and workstations for that reason. What advantage do businesses get out of Surface over going with more popular, better-known, and equally priced alternatives like the iPad?
I will probably buy one of these. They run Windows. They have a USB port. They will run a piece of software I want to run that will not run on IOS or Android, although it also has a version for OS-X.
No, they won't!
Windows RT is *not* Windows. It's a new operating system for ARM processors that is designed to look and feel like Windows, and shares some of the original code base. It has no backwards compatibility with existing Windows applications. Just in case I didn't make that clear, it will *NOT* run *ANY* existing desktop Windows applications. In fact, you can't even recompile or write new desktop application for WinRT. There is a desktop, but it's only allowed to run a few programs, such as Microsoft Office. (Why the FTC is letting them get away with that blatantly anti-competitive decision is beyond me.) Oh, and WinRT can't join domains either, so businesses won't be interested in using it.
If you want to run existing Windows software, you'll have to wait for the x86-based Surface *Pro*, which will set you back nearly a thousand bucks. *That* will indeed be basically a PC in a tablet form factor, and compatible with the usual Windows ecosystem stuff.
Microsoft is setting itself up for a massive backlash with this device. If Slashdot readers are thinking this way ("it's Windows, it will run my software") then how many ordinary users will make the same mistake? They will not be well disposed towards Microsoft products after that experience, I guarantee you.
This is irrational thinking. Executing him won't bring her back. Locking him up will prevent him from committing further crimes. You're engaging in a version of the sunk cost fallacy.
Our current regulations for cars in the US are quite strict. They got started for a good reason (prior to regulation, the companies actually had a collusive agreement *not* to bring new safety features to market), but we're reaching the point of diminishing returns. (Mandatory tire pressure monitoring sensors? Really?) It's actually a testament to human ingenuity that new cars in America can be brought to market as cheaply as they currently are.
But there has to be something to fill the gap. Currently we allow regular cars, which bristle with safety features... and motorcycles, which have essentially no safety features at all. This seems bizarre; a car design from 1990 is far, far safer than a motorcycle, but we wouldn't allow the former to be manufactured and sold as a new product today, while the latter is just fine.
What I'd propose is a new category: city cars. These would have a maximum speed of 55 MPH and would not be permitted on interstates. (On limited-access state roads, it would be up to the traffic authorities to decide if they are allowed or not.) From a safety standpoint, they would be treated pretty much like motorcycles: anything goes. No airbag requirements, no ABS requirements, nothing. Consequently, they could be much, much cheaper than normal cars. For people who have a commute that doesn't require going on the highway, this could be a very economical alternative. And at low speeds, safety becomes less of a concern.
I know that the Neighborhood Electric Vehicle classification is similar, but that only applies to electric (not gas) vehicles, and they can only go on roads with speed limits of 35 MPH or less, which means you can't really use them for much of anything in the real world.
Keynes proved that the Parable of the Broken Window was wrong, at least when the economy is operating under capacity.
Broken window fallacy. Throwing something away that still has economic value does not boost the economy. Why don't we just bury dollars in Yucca mountain?
Frédéric Bastiat died in 1850, before we understood jack-shit about how the macroeconomy works. Citing him to refute Keynes is like citing Newton to refute Einstein.
The broken-window "fallacy" is only a fallacy if the economy is running at full capacity. If there is a demand slump, then juicing demand (by whatever means) can help to break out of it. A hell of a lot of windows were broken during WWII, and guess what? It ended the Great Depression permanently.
Are you crazy? New cars are ego driven decisions and you NEVER come out ahead over years of use. It's the first mile that kills you.
That used to be the case, but it's not anymore. Check out the price of a 2-year-old Honda or Toyota compared to a new one of the same model and trim. The difference is usually not that substantial. The adage that a car loses most of its value when you drive it off the lot was formulated in the days of 1970s rustbuckets.
Yes, if you're willing to buy an old junker and have the skills to do some of the maintenance yourself, you can save a few bucks. But don't forget to factor in the opportunity cost of all those hours you're spending trawling through junkyards and wielding a torque wrench. And your old car also won't be as safe as a new vehicle.
The Lords' program was called "Cash for Clunkers," and it took ~700,000 used cars off the market by literally destroying the engines intentionally (by pouring some powder directly into the engine and running it until died).
The only cars eligible for destruction under cash-for-clunkers were those that had "a weighted combined average rating of 18 or fewer miles per gallon". (See this Wikipedia article for details.) These are the vehicles that should be off the roads.
Cash-for-clunkers provided a rebate of $3,500 to $4,500. This allowed some low-income buyers to purchase new vehicles which they could not have afforded before. The total price of a cheap new car, after the discount, could have been under $10,000.
The reason why there are fewer cheap used cars isn't because of cash-for-clunkers; it's because cars today are made to a higher standard than they ever have before. It used to be that a 3-year-old car had lost a majority of its value, because reliability was so poor. Today, a 3-year-old car holds its value much better, because it's a higher-quality product.
Can we please have one, just one, operating system that isn't designed for touchy crap? Look, tablets and smartphones are great, but when I'm on the desktop, I want an OS designed expressly for the desktop, not compromised with a bunch of tablet nonsense.
By all accounts, Innocence of Muslims is worthless tripe. But we cannot permit even this sort of stuff to be censored, because we know it will not stop there. The same groups of people who were rioting over Nakoula's amateurish film were also up in arms about Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, a serious work of literature. And more recently, British broadcaster Channel 4 cancelled a planned public viewing of Tom Holland's Islam: The Untold Story because of "security fears". Holland's work was a serious contribution to the study of Islamic history, and Holland is actually quite respectful of Islam, which he considers a moral advance over the polytheism that preceded it. But since he questioned the canonical story of Muhammad and the official history of Islam's origin (just as Christian scholars have been doing with the Bible and church history for centuries), far too many Muslims simply couldn't abide that.
We cannot, must not, allow the precedent that if you yell loud enough and threaten enough violence that you can silence your opponents.