the only thing standing between you and the forceful intent of a corporation is society and its governence
That's a tautology. What we are talking about is not whether we need laws, but what form those laws take. Liberals want more and more regulation of corporations and regulatory enforcement, but that just doesn't work, it is in fact the source of the problems we have with corporations.
The problem is that, on the one hand, society largely exempts corporations and its officers from financial and criminal liability and creates endless room for corporate rent seeking and political corruption, but then on the other hand people like you whine and complain about the resulting mess and try to reign it in through more and more regulation which only provides even more opportunities for rent seeking and corruption. Worse yet, the exemptions to liability for corporations don't just apply to the parties of a contract, they apply to harm they cause to third parties.
The real solution is to (1) hold corporations and the individuals they are comprised of responsible the same way you hold any group of people responsible for their actions (i.e., increase corporate liability) so that illegal behavior results in serious consequences, (2) stop bailouts and government-created monopolies so making bad products results in serious consequences, and (3) at the same time decrease regulation so that rent-seeking gets reduced. That's the only combination of approaches that has a prayer of working.
I can evade the bad behavior of corporations in a free market. I can evade it less and less these days because our market becomes less and less free. Attempts to regulate corporations are the cause of these problems, not the solution.
No, it's worse because the government can force you do to things and you don't have a choice in the matter. Corporations by themselves can't generally force you to do things, they can only offer you something and you have a choice whether you buy it or not. The only way a corporation can force you to do something if they are aided by government.
You're absolutely right that neither corporations nor government have ethics. The difference is: with corporations, that's what's expected and it shouldn't matter because in a free market, you don't have to buy their crap. When the federal government is unethical, you have no way of escaping from that. And when they mandate monopolies (e.g., media) or purchases (e.g., health care), you can't use the market anymore to stay away from corporations whose products you don't want.
Really? So you think the general population... most of which are using their cell phones while driving are smart enough to make intelligent decisions themselves
Yes, I think "the general population" is smart enough to make decisions about how to drive for themselves. If you don't believe that, you don't believe in democracy.
I'm an arrogant prick because the evidence says that people are too stupid to pay attention to the road?
No, you're an arrogant prick because you think you're better than everybody else.
They specifically admitted this in the article. The specific quote reads
You're missing the point. They use the term "accumulate" even though they themselves observe that it gets buried. Hence, the term "accumulate" doesn't actually apply.
Which the study also admitted. They even pointed out that the rubbish was sometimes benefited the marine life
Again, they state these facts, but then put a negative spin on it.
I think that it is unfair for you to accuse these researchers of telling lies and being biased.
I did not accuse them of "telling lies", I accused them of bias. They (presumably) state accurate facts, but then interpret or present them using a particular bias. That is, the facts in their own article suggest that their interpretation is biased.
First, the trash doesn't seem to "accumulate" on the sea floor, but appears to get buried over time, removing it from the ecosystem. Furthermore, they haven't actually shown significant negative effects.
Of course, it's good to recycle more and people shouldn't discard trash in the ocean, but people should also be truthful and unbiased in the presentation of their research.
They will pass a law requiring the kids not to distract the driver! That will fix it! Right after the law requiring kids not to scream their lungs out on flights! It's just that evil conservatives are currently blocking this legislation right now because big business and gun lobby!
What I want is for people to not fuck with their phones (or anything else!) while driving... Other people don't seem to be that intelligent, and telling them why its unsafe doesn't seem to be working.
What I want is for people not to be arrogant pricks like you; that ain't gonna happen any time soon either.
No so with windows, the closest thing to a windows clone is reactos which still can't run the majority of PC applications without some serious finger crossing or hacking.
You can't take a Windows app and run it somewhere else, but many developers simply use tools that let them target multiple platforms with little additional effort.
As there is no labeling of GMO foods in the US, how would you suggest I avoid them?
I wasn't thinking you were nutty enough to reject all GMOs, but simply the ones you don't think "taste good". Anyway, while there is no mandatory GMO labeling, but you can certainly find GMO-free foods.
If it isn't fresh meat or produce, I have to assume some part is GM.
Yes, you do. And no amount of labeling would change that.
On the large scale, This doesn't seem to be a realistic way to have a stable, sustainable food supply.
Sustainability is some expression of middle class angst, not a realistic goal. Life and biology is constant change and adaptation.
If we have to keep upping the pesticide resistance
We don't have to "up" anything, we just periodically have to change pesticides and herbicides.
I don't think any of these would have made much of a difference. McKinney and Stein would have ended up being nearly carbon copies of Obama, except the would have done even worse on the economy, and Huntsman might have done a slightly better job on the economy, but I don't see much support for civil liberties there either.
Take just a second and read about what must be done in order to use FISA data in a criminal prosecution of a US citizen.
Not much, actually: once police are tipped off what they should be looking for, the data can be re-requested with a regular warrant and then used in court. As a defendant, you wouldn't even know that the whole thing started with FISA data.
What is the one they you don't hear them talking about selling?
The PC business, because they already sold that long ago.
IBM's mainframe business is the model for the rest of the company. The margins are huge, where else can you charge 6 and 7 figure sums for yearly maintenance on an OS, much less all the other stuff that goes with it.
Yes, but Microsoft Windows is more like IBM's old attempt at a PC monopoly, not like IBM's mainframe business.
No, I don't think it's a "strong overstatement". The relevant analogy isn't the IBM mainframe business, it's the IBM PC business, where cheaper and better third party alternatives pretty quickly killed IBM's business.
Windows and Office are dying. Microsoft needs to use the remaining revenue they can squeeze from them to start up new division and products without tying them to these dying software systems. So far, almost everything else they have done has failed because it had to be tied to Windows and Office.
They don't need to update twice a second. All they need to do is compute the difference between the browser clock and the BBC clock; they can do that every time they update the news stream anyway. There is NO additional server load.
That's about $65/sq ft, somewhere around the cheapest US cities or Berlin. Most Asian and European cities are far more expensive. So, these kinds of building may make sense. I'd worry about maintenance, crime, and long-term value, though.
As I was saying, running NTP is probably good enough. But if they choose to become their own tier 1 NTP server, it's laughably cheap these days, and in that case, they are dependent on nobody else and get the most accurate time.
They don't have to run a time server, they just need to keep their time server updated; once an hour from is probably enough. There are also a variety of cheap hardware add-ons (even for Windows) that pull accurate time from radio beacons or GPS.
As for the time zone to display, they ask the browser for its configured time zone and use that. Presumably, that's what the user considers his time zone.
Their crops aren't better, round up ready corn yields less grain per plant and the grains are of irregular shape and size which increases complexity of machinery dealing with it (not to mention the things are plain ugly and taste funny)
So why are farmers buying the stuff?
Their tech have effect only in one brand of pesticide (their own), round up ready means that their herbicide (a herbicide so potent that kills almost every plant because it inhibits synthesis of vital aminoacids) can be used indiscriminately without affecting the crop,
The plants don't care about the brand of glyphosate you use, and it's been generic for more than a decade.
that usually means that farmers use more of it (which causes much joy in Monsanto's board of directors).
You make no sense. If farmers got lower yields and had higher herbicide use, they wouldn't buy this stuff.
That thing is not toxic to humans (we believe) but ultimately ends up polluting the sea where it kills macroscopic and microscopic photosynthetic life,
Slashdot Mirror
That's a tautology. What we are talking about is not whether we need laws, but what form those laws take. Liberals want more and more regulation of corporations and regulatory enforcement, but that just doesn't work, it is in fact the source of the problems we have with corporations.
The problem is that, on the one hand, society largely exempts corporations and its officers from financial and criminal liability and creates endless room for corporate rent seeking and political corruption, but then on the other hand people like you whine and complain about the resulting mess and try to reign it in through more and more regulation which only provides even more opportunities for rent seeking and corruption. Worse yet, the exemptions to liability for corporations don't just apply to the parties of a contract, they apply to harm they cause to third parties.
The real solution is to (1) hold corporations and the individuals they are comprised of responsible the same way you hold any group of people responsible for their actions (i.e., increase corporate liability) so that illegal behavior results in serious consequences, (2) stop bailouts and government-created monopolies so making bad products results in serious consequences, and (3) at the same time decrease regulation so that rent-seeking gets reduced. That's the only combination of approaches that has a prayer of working.
I can evade the bad behavior of corporations in a free market. I can evade it less and less these days because our market becomes less and less free. Attempts to regulate corporations are the cause of these problems, not the solution.
No, it's worse because the government can force you do to things and you don't have a choice in the matter. Corporations by themselves can't generally force you to do things, they can only offer you something and you have a choice whether you buy it or not. The only way a corporation can force you to do something if they are aided by government.
You're absolutely right that neither corporations nor government have ethics. The difference is: with corporations, that's what's expected and it shouldn't matter because in a free market, you don't have to buy their crap. When the federal government is unethical, you have no way of escaping from that. And when they mandate monopolies (e.g., media) or purchases (e.g., health care), you can't use the market anymore to stay away from corporations whose products you don't want.
That's a sentencing floor, not a sentencing cap. A cap would limit the maximum sentencing possible.
Yes, I think "the general population" is smart enough to make decisions about how to drive for themselves. If you don't believe that, you don't believe in democracy.
No, you're an arrogant prick because you think you're better than everybody else.
You're missing the point. They use the term "accumulate" even though they themselves observe that it gets buried. Hence, the term "accumulate" doesn't actually apply.
Again, they state these facts, but then put a negative spin on it.
I did not accuse them of "telling lies", I accused them of bias. They (presumably) state accurate facts, but then interpret or present them using a particular bias. That is, the facts in their own article suggest that their interpretation is biased.
First, the trash doesn't seem to "accumulate" on the sea floor, but appears to get buried over time, removing it from the ecosystem. Furthermore, they haven't actually shown significant negative effects.
Of course, it's good to recycle more and people shouldn't discard trash in the ocean, but people should also be truthful and unbiased in the presentation of their research.
They will pass a law requiring the kids not to distract the driver! That will fix it! Right after the law requiring kids not to scream their lungs out on flights! It's just that evil conservatives are currently blocking this legislation right now because big business and gun lobby!
What I want is for people not to be arrogant pricks like you; that ain't gonna happen any time soon either.
That is entirely up to you. But if you want to read the data, you can.
You can't take a Windows app and run it somewhere else, but many developers simply use tools that let them target multiple platforms with little additional effort.
I wasn't thinking you were nutty enough to reject all GMOs, but simply the ones you don't think "taste good". Anyway, while there is no mandatory GMO labeling, but you can certainly find GMO-free foods.
Yes, you do. And no amount of labeling would change that.
Sustainability is some expression of middle class angst, not a realistic goal. Life and biology is constant change and adaptation.
We don't have to "up" anything, we just periodically have to change pesticides and herbicides.
I don't think any of these would have made much of a difference. McKinney and Stein would have ended up being nearly carbon copies of Obama, except the would have done even worse on the economy, and Huntsman might have done a slightly better job on the economy, but I don't see much support for civil liberties there either.
Not much, actually: once police are tipped off what they should be looking for, the data can be re-requested with a regular warrant and then used in court. As a defendant, you wouldn't even know that the whole thing started with FISA data.
The PC business, because they already sold that long ago.
Yes, but Microsoft Windows is more like IBM's old attempt at a PC monopoly, not like IBM's mainframe business.
No, I don't think it's a "strong overstatement". The relevant analogy isn't the IBM mainframe business, it's the IBM PC business, where cheaper and better third party alternatives pretty quickly killed IBM's business.
Windows and Office are dying. Microsoft needs to use the remaining revenue they can squeeze from them to start up new division and products without tying them to these dying software systems. So far, almost everything else they have done has failed because it had to be tied to Windows and Office.
They don't need to update twice a second. All they need to do is compute the difference between the browser clock and the BBC clock; they can do that every time they update the news stream anyway. There is NO additional server load.
That's about $65/sq ft, somewhere around the cheapest US cities or Berlin. Most Asian and European cities are far more expensive. So, these kinds of building may make sense. I'd worry about maintenance, crime, and long-term value, though.
You can't multiply by three?
As I was saying, running NTP is probably good enough. But if they choose to become their own tier 1 NTP server, it's laughably cheap these days, and in that case, they are dependent on nobody else and get the most accurate time.
They don't have to run a time server, they just need to keep their time server updated; once an hour from is probably enough. There are also a variety of cheap hardware add-ons (even for Windows) that pull accurate time from radio beacons or GPS.
As for the time zone to display, they ask the browser for its configured time zone and use that. Presumably, that's what the user considers his time zone.
So why are farmers buying the stuff?
The plants don't care about the brand of glyphosate you use, and it's been generic for more than a decade.
You make no sense. If farmers got lower yields and had higher herbicide use, they wouldn't buy this stuff.
That statement is not supported by facts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Toxicity
You're saying that if you're in, say, Iowa, you can't buy non-Monsanto seed? I find that very hard to believe.