I detest the underhanded way Facebook tried to funnel all email into their messaging system, but there are clear benefits to centralised communication in some situations, the most obvious being group conversations and event planning. These (and the personal web page that is your wall) is why Facebook took over email for a lot of communications.
On the flip side, look at attempts to use Facebook-style communication in the workplace with Yammer etc. It only gets used by marketing and sales to pat each other on the back. Communication about actual work is still done using email.
is it okay for the state to tell someone who they must do business with?
An excellent question. Like most things, our principles behind this are confused and it mostly boils down to supporting laws that force your particular belief. For example, a gay bookshop is unlikely to hire a Christian who believes homosexuality to be immoral, even if they were the best applicant for the job and could perform the role without bringing in their personal beliefs. This would be considered perfectly reasonable by most pro-gay people, but perhaps not in the opposite situation of a Christian bookshop refusing to hire gay staff (which of course most anti-gay Christians would find perfectly reasonable).
Reversing it all, customers are allowed to boycott businesses because they don't like their stance on an issue (or even the owner's stance, businesses rarely need to have a stance on hot polticial issues). Perhaps this hypocrisy in anti-discrimination laws is a recognition that businesses usually hold the power, or perhaps it's just simple social engineering.
To counter all this, you could say it is about professionalism - business is about cold, hard money, so you cannot refuse to do business with someone for reasons other than business success. The laws do not seem to consistently reflect this principle however.
If you're not the capital behind the company, if you're not the one that is taking the risk of losing it all, then please do your job as requested.
Ironically this is why low-level employees spend their time chatting etc. - they're unmotivated, unless they are desperate for the job. Imagine a utopia where all citizens had equal ownership of capital!
All the fellatio fanatics have blown this coito-currency out of proportion. A blowjob-based currency will never work, here's why;
1. Transactions are too slow. Who wants to wait 5+ minutes to receive their stash?
2. Bob's capacity for receiving payment diminishes drastically after each purchase.
3. It's incredibly painful to reverse a transaction.
4. Blowjobs are inherently deflationary.
It's true, globalisation undercuts my argument that all players in an industry are in the same boat as wage regulations are only local. The counter-argument to rising prices is that it's not linear. Doubling the minimum wage won't double prices* The redistribution caused by raising the minimum wage sucks money from capital and business owners, typically those who are more wealthy. The underclass is therefore better off even if their steak sandwiches cost $18 like in Australia.
That said, you have to do these things gradually, you can't just jump the U.S. to the Australian minimum wage without industrial chaos.
* Overall, it actually may do worse than that in particular situations, the supply and demand equation can be unstable.
That appears to be well above the Norwegian minimum wage and yet McDonald's remains a viable business in Norway. That should be an informative data point for those who believe raising the minimum wage will destroy industries. It has some effect on prices, for sure, but when all businesses in the industry are in the same situation it still works. Further, you eliminate the underclass who now have more disposable income to spend.
You are probably right. I considered mentioning this in the original post - I don't do any gym work at all. However I do have a solid 'V' shape and am of average height, hence the BMI. Weight 95kg, could afford to lose 5 of those. I cycle 40km per day, eat way too much chocolate.
There was a story this week where Israel has banned ads using models with a BMI under 8.5, which is astounding that they felt the need to do this. I can maybe understand it for World Vision sponsor children, but regular products?
BMI is designed as a measure of population weight, not individual. Mine is over 30, making me technically obese, yet I have so little body fat I cannot float in swimming pools, and only just in the ocean.
You know, social media, Get Up and Change.org have probably done more to tip me toward conservatism than anything else (I still consider myself somewhat leftish). People mindlessly click and share all manner of misleading hype simply because it aligns with their world view or the set of beliefs that they associate with their political 'team'.
That said, your analysis is not perfectly fair either. Silt is being moved from point A to point B, but the issue is that it is no longer stably compacted but will suspend in the water and become susceptible to long-range movement. I have no idea how significant this will be.
Congress did not declare war. They authorized military action, but lacked the balls to declare war.
True, but that has been standard protocol since after WWII. It is (sadly) a separate issue to congressional approval which is the OP's benchmark for comparing the imperialism of presidents.
True, economics was my worst subject in school, it never felt exact enough. I don't think they cover fractional reserve banking at the high school level, but it would be beneficial for everyone to understand it.
In the $ example, the depositor thinks they have $300 in their account and the borrower thinks they have $300 in their loan account, and they are both sort of right. Both can actually spend that money and transfer it to third parties at other financial institutions.
With bitcoin, each BTC is cryptographically signed. The bank cannot transfer the depositor's 300 BTC to the borrowers loan account without it disappearing from the depositor's account. Each BTC is unique, unlike $s which are essentially pooled by the bank to amortise the 'runs' on particular accounts. Am I misunderstanding? Perhaps banks could pool bitcoin in the same way, and the coins you transfer to your account are not necessarily the coins you use when you spend them, however this would seriously break the design of bitcoin.
All this shows why Bitcoin is not designed to replace national currencies. It is intended as a mechanism to transfer existing currency , although it behaves like a currency in various ways.
Perhaps you already know this, but Bitcoin cannot be used in a fractional reserve system, simply because banks can't magically create more - the supply is fixed. Sure, they could say they'd lend you 300 bitcoins for your house, while only having 30 in their system, but they wouldn't have legitimate keys and you couldn't transfer them to the seller.
The culture of any group is the combined 'agreement' of behaviour of the individuals. Place a random group of people together and they will develop a culture. Add one more person to the mix and they will both influence, and have to incorporate, the existing culture. You can't legislate this away.
This is the paradox of professionalism, which is supposed to be about focusing purely on work and, if you will, maintaining a culture of ignoring cultural differences. However, groups that share a similar culture (especially if it is natural and less forced) are far more cohesive and productive, so management holds team-building events. People also naturally want to form groups, so they go out for drinks and talk about their lives. All technically unprofessional.
Hypothetical, you know you are the victim of mistaken identity, and that the real culprit will have cleaned up the evidence by the time your lawyer arrives. Do you tell the police now or clam up until it's too late to easily clear your name?
There's also (ironically) a prisoner's dilemma here. A world where law-abiding citizens overwhelmingly try to help the police makes it much safer for the wrongfully detained. Police attitudes would be different and you'd get some benefit of the doubt.
Emissions reduction is a global goal. Believing in climate change doesn't necessitate believing in communism where we all consume equal resources. That said, it's an interesting question as to our commons responsibility - to what extent should we take account of the global population in determining the right level of our personal emissions?
Why don't we have 95% of the population exploring one branch of science or another? Why can't more books be written? More movies be done?
We could (and currently we do relative to the subsistence past), but it would require a much more socialist structure, otherwise who controls and allocates the 'mundane' products (food etc.) made by machines?
I live in a country where 85% have written "christian" in the passport... more than half of them are atheists. (Just look on an online dating forum, more than half the people are atheists)
Actually Christians (members of most organised religions really) have much less need of online dating as they are typically within a large community of like-minded individuals, the effect strengthened by the belief that they should only marry within their religion. It's the concept of the third place (after home and work). Atheism doesn't lend itself to this, and hobby groups (which are third places) are often heavily weighted toward a particular gender.
And you think spreading Islam is the agenda of those heading Islamic terrorist organizations?
To a degree I think yes. Many of the leaders are 'true believers'. Your point, though, is that alpha leaders are the same everywhere you go, it's just their nature to lead, organise and build a stronger power base. However there is no point being purely cynical or purely naive about motives, it can be a combination of both.
the train dilemma is flawed when you consider that it would never happen in real life anyway
Wrong, the title says that the virtual reality results are relative to real life. Clearly (the article is paywalled) the researchers conducted a similar real life experiment with participants standing idly by as trains plummeted into groups of 5 bystanders. I guess ethics committees aren't what they used to be.
I suppose it boils down to the question of why we value gold and silver so highly
There's a direct relationship to supply here (relative to copper, then iron and aluminium), however with gold it was used to underpin currency, so the total supply was worth the total of all goods and services in existence, sort of. I suspect society still has remnants of this thinking inflating the price of gold (while acknowledging that gold is very useful and pretty).
Slashdot Mirror
I detest the underhanded way Facebook tried to funnel all email into their messaging system, but there are clear benefits to centralised communication in some situations, the most obvious being group conversations and event planning. These (and the personal web page that is your wall) is why Facebook took over email for a lot of communications.
On the flip side, look at attempts to use Facebook-style communication in the workplace with Yammer etc. It only gets used by marketing and sales to pat each other on the back. Communication about actual work is still done using email.
is it okay for the state to tell someone who they must do business with?
An excellent question. Like most things, our principles behind this are confused and it mostly boils down to supporting laws that force your particular belief. For example, a gay bookshop is unlikely to hire a Christian who believes homosexuality to be immoral, even if they were the best applicant for the job and could perform the role without bringing in their personal beliefs. This would be considered perfectly reasonable by most pro-gay people, but perhaps not in the opposite situation of a Christian bookshop refusing to hire gay staff (which of course most anti-gay Christians would find perfectly reasonable).
Reversing it all, customers are allowed to boycott businesses because they don't like their stance on an issue (or even the owner's stance, businesses rarely need to have a stance on hot polticial issues). Perhaps this hypocrisy in anti-discrimination laws is a recognition that businesses usually hold the power, or perhaps it's just simple social engineering.
To counter all this, you could say it is about professionalism - business is about cold, hard money, so you cannot refuse to do business with someone for reasons other than business success. The laws do not seem to consistently reflect this principle however.
If you're not the capital behind the company, if you're not the one that is taking the risk of losing it all, then please do your job as requested.
Ironically this is why low-level employees spend their time chatting etc. - they're unmotivated, unless they are desperate for the job. Imagine a utopia where all citizens had equal ownership of capital!
All the fellatio fanatics have blown this coito-currency out of proportion. A blowjob-based currency will never work, here's why;
1. Transactions are too slow. Who wants to wait 5+ minutes to receive their stash?
2. Bob's capacity for receiving payment diminishes drastically after each purchase.
3. It's incredibly painful to reverse a transaction.
4. Blowjobs are inherently deflationary.
It's true, globalisation undercuts my argument that all players in an industry are in the same boat as wage regulations are only local. The counter-argument to rising prices is that it's not linear. Doubling the minimum wage won't double prices* The redistribution caused by raising the minimum wage sucks money from capital and business owners, typically those who are more wealthy. The underclass is therefore better off even if their steak sandwiches cost $18 like in Australia.
That said, you have to do these things gradually, you can't just jump the U.S. to the Australian minimum wage without industrial chaos.
* Overall, it actually may do worse than that in particular situations, the supply and demand equation can be unstable.
That appears to be well above the Norwegian minimum wage and yet McDonald's remains a viable business in Norway. That should be an informative data point for those who believe raising the minimum wage will destroy industries. It has some effect on prices, for sure, but when all businesses in the industry are in the same situation it still works. Further, you eliminate the underclass who now have more disposable income to spend.
Here's an interesting article on how McDonald's functions under high minimum wage conditions.
Actually he's correct when you consider the story is about Spanish malware;
"Today many errors you can spot!"
What they should have done is posted a flood of Windows 8 stories and seen how we responded.
But if I used "mass" I could never lose it, just convert it into energy.
You are probably right. I considered mentioning this in the original post - I don't do any gym work at all. However I do have a solid 'V' shape and am of average height, hence the BMI. Weight 95kg, could afford to lose 5 of those. I cycle 40km per day, eat way too much chocolate.
There was a story this week where Israel has banned ads using models with a BMI under 8.5, which is astounding that they felt the need to do this. I can maybe understand it for World Vision sponsor children, but regular products?
BMI is designed as a measure of population weight, not individual. Mine is over 30, making me technically obese, yet I have so little body fat I cannot float in swimming pools, and only just in the ocean.
You know, social media, Get Up and Change.org have probably done more to tip me toward conservatism than anything else (I still consider myself somewhat leftish). People mindlessly click and share all manner of misleading hype simply because it aligns with their world view or the set of beliefs that they associate with their political 'team'.
That said, your analysis is not perfectly fair either. Silt is being moved from point A to point B, but the issue is that it is no longer stably compacted but will suspend in the water and become susceptible to long-range movement. I have no idea how significant this will be.
What specific equipment are you using? Is it suitable (in size and price) for home/hobbiest use as per the submitter?
Congress did not declare war. They authorized military action, but lacked the balls to declare war.
True, but that has been standard protocol since after WWII. It is (sadly) a separate issue to congressional approval which is the OP's benchmark for comparing the imperialism of presidents.
True, economics was my worst subject in school, it never felt exact enough. I don't think they cover fractional reserve banking at the high school level, but it would be beneficial for everyone to understand it.
In the $ example, the depositor thinks they have $300 in their account and the borrower thinks they have $300 in their loan account, and they are both sort of right. Both can actually spend that money and transfer it to third parties at other financial institutions.
With bitcoin, each BTC is cryptographically signed. The bank cannot transfer the depositor's 300 BTC to the borrowers loan account without it disappearing from the depositor's account. Each BTC is unique, unlike $s which are essentially pooled by the bank to amortise the 'runs' on particular accounts. Am I misunderstanding? Perhaps banks could pool bitcoin in the same way, and the coins you transfer to your account are not necessarily the coins you use when you spend them, however this would seriously break the design of bitcoin.
All this shows why Bitcoin is not designed to replace national currencies. It is intended as a mechanism to transfer existing currency , although it behaves like a currency in various ways.
Perhaps you already know this, but Bitcoin cannot be used in a fractional reserve system, simply because banks can't magically create more - the supply is fixed. Sure, they could say they'd lend you 300 bitcoins for your house, while only having 30 in their system, but they wouldn't have legitimate keys and you couldn't transfer them to the seller.
The culture of any group is the combined 'agreement' of behaviour of the individuals. Place a random group of people together and they will develop a culture. Add one more person to the mix and they will both influence, and have to incorporate, the existing culture. You can't legislate this away.
This is the paradox of professionalism, which is supposed to be about focusing purely on work and, if you will, maintaining a culture of ignoring cultural differences. However, groups that share a similar culture (especially if it is natural and less forced) are far more cohesive and productive, so management holds team-building events. People also naturally want to form groups, so they go out for drinks and talk about their lives. All technically unprofessional.
Hypothetical, you know you are the victim of mistaken identity, and that the real culprit will have cleaned up the evidence by the time your lawyer arrives. Do you tell the police now or clam up until it's too late to easily clear your name?
There's also (ironically) a prisoner's dilemma here. A world where law-abiding citizens overwhelmingly try to help the police makes it much safer for the wrongfully detained. Police attitudes would be different and you'd get some benefit of the doubt.
Emissions reduction is a global goal. Believing in climate change doesn't necessitate believing in communism where we all consume equal resources. That said, it's an interesting question as to our commons responsibility - to what extent should we take account of the global population in determining the right level of our personal emissions?
Why don't we have 95% of the population exploring one branch of science or another? Why can't more books be written? More movies be done?
We could (and currently we do relative to the subsistence past), but it would require a much more socialist structure, otherwise who controls and allocates the 'mundane' products (food etc.) made by machines?
I hope he used a silencer, otherwise that's just plain hypocrisy.
I live in a country where 85% have written "christian" in the passport ... more than half of them are atheists. (Just look on an online dating forum, more than half the people are atheists)
Actually Christians (members of most organised religions really) have much less need of online dating as they are typically within a large community of like-minded individuals, the effect strengthened by the belief that they should only marry within their religion. It's the concept of the third place (after home and work). Atheism doesn't lend itself to this, and hobby groups (which are third places) are often heavily weighted toward a particular gender.
And you think spreading Islam is the agenda of those heading Islamic terrorist organizations?
To a degree I think yes. Many of the leaders are 'true believers'. Your point, though, is that alpha leaders are the same everywhere you go, it's just their nature to lead, organise and build a stronger power base. However there is no point being purely cynical or purely naive about motives, it can be a combination of both.
the train dilemma is flawed when you consider that it would never happen in real life anyway
Wrong, the title says that the virtual reality results are relative to real life. Clearly (the article is paywalled) the researchers conducted a similar real life experiment with participants standing idly by as trains plummeted into groups of 5 bystanders. I guess ethics committees aren't what they used to be.
I suppose it boils down to the question of why we value gold and silver so highly
There's a direct relationship to supply here (relative to copper, then iron and aluminium), however with gold it was used to underpin currency, so the total supply was worth the total of all goods and services in existence, sort of. I suspect society still has remnants of this thinking inflating the price of gold (while acknowledging that gold is very useful and pretty).