Except for the cat two days ago who was blinded in one eye by a BB gun.
There is a very simple rule which I have been taught from a young age to apply to all guns (my school had a cadet force, so lots of people were trained in firearms before adulthood): if you're not okay with killing it, don't shoot at it.
Your whole post is very time-cuboid, but I especifically got brainfucked by:
'empty' (a form of zero)
This is the kind of crap that comes from programmers trying to think in the machine domain rather than the problem domain, which in turn comes from fucked up hybrid languages like C++.
(I mean, I'd accept the excuse, "C++ gives you high level tools but is also close enough to the machine to allow efficient programming," if anyone actually programmed efficiently these days. But increase in software complexity should NOT require me to have two orders of magnitude clock speed increase.)
It's not the lack of promise of a specific rate of return that makes this a Ponzi scheme - it's the lack of wealth generation. Your early players aren't getting rich because they've invested early in a productive endeavour, but by hyping up demand for an increasingly scarce item of no intrinsic value.
Even now, so many bitcoin adherents seem to be under the misapprehension that bitcoins could genuinely be a replacement for government-regulated currencies or gold, even though there is nothing to stop governments regulating bitcoins like the USD (and changing algorithms if necessary), and gold has intrinsic value. These absurd beliefs, which seem to be deliberately promoted by those involved early with bitcoins, just fuel the bubble in a daft zero-sum game.
1) I didn't realise that jumping a ticket barrier while looking a bit Arab was sufficient grounds for being shot several times. I must have been dreaming through the twenty-five years my father and I lived through IRA bombings in London as commuters using the underground, running around looking like Arabs, and never being shot.
This included the time my foreigner-with-a-suitcase father had to run from a bomb which had just gone off. Thank goodness our services weren't always this incompetent;
2) Can you think of reasons why Kelly's family would not want to make a fuss? Here are two:
i) If your loved one has just died then, whatever it means to the country, it's also a very personal thing to you. You don't want it turning into a media freeding frenzy (well, certainly no more than it already was!);
ii) If you have the slightest suspicion that the government has murdered one of your family, who wouldn't you want to piss off a second time?
There are a few absurd but also some very credible outstanding objections to the handling of Kelly's inquest.
3) Re Tomlinson, it requires a fairly high level of legal cluelessness and a strong moral vacuum to argue, "Well, he was ill and would probably have died soon anyway, so what does it matter that he was assaulted by a police officer? And who cares that the police denied the assault?"
* * *
I agree that Kelly's death is the odd one out in that we have no confirmation that the death was the result of needless state brutality. Instead, all we have is the refusal to conduct a full timely inquest following one of the most suspicious high-profile deaths in recent UK political memory, an on-going defence from (ex-)government of confirmed liars, and a pile of never-addressed objections.
If justice is not seen to be done then justice is not done.
Well, you have a lot of faith in British law enforcement and security.
No, you'll suddenly decide to kill yourself just before you're going to present important information, like David Kelly. Or you'll commit a minor infraction like jumping a ticket barrier and be shot a few times for "oh he was totally about to set off a bomb", a la Jean Charles de Menezes. Or you'll have a heart attack after being lightly handled by a police officer during a protest, like Ian Tomlinson.
Thank you. I was hoping to be as obvious as possible without actually stating it, leaving the kids to fling shit until they worked out their mistake, but you said what needed to be said.
Social democracy isn't bolstering the power of government - the government is already large and powerful and in the hands of businesspeople. I am talking about change of control.
I don't know what you mean about not seeing companies as if they are enemies. I don't see any of this in terms of enmity or friendship, just power grabs.
Anyway, there's my dismissal of two of your straw men.
Well, governments aren't going anywhere, and neither are powerful individuals, so either you temper them with a good dose of social democracy, or you lie down and give up.
Criminal means convicted under the law - so it's precisely lobbying and other corruption which stops this behaviour being criminal.
There is no solution except a tempering of capitalism. If you allow businesses to become too powerful, they will take over governments. They have taken over governments.
Slashdot Mirror
Except for the cat two days ago who was blinded in one eye by a BB gun.
There is a very simple rule which I have been taught from a young age to apply to all guns (my school had a cadet force, so lots of people were trained in firearms before adulthood): if you're not okay with killing it, don't shoot at it.
OOI, how are those not living at home supposed to survive if their first job does not pay a living wage?
Oh, it's the "only following orders" excuse, except with Amazon not even being forced to work for the CIA.
Does nobody take responsibility for the consequences of their actions any more?
Your whole post is very time-cuboid, but I especifically got brainfucked by:
'empty' (a form of zero)
This is the kind of crap that comes from programmers trying to think in the machine domain rather than the problem domain, which in turn comes from fucked up hybrid languages like C++.
(I mean, I'd accept the excuse, "C++ gives you high level tools but is also close enough to the machine to allow efficient programming," if anyone actually programmed efficiently these days. But increase in software complexity should NOT require me to have two orders of magnitude clock speed increase.)
Now try formalising that without begging the question.
If you think of this as:
1) Corporate welfare to the tune of $600,000,000 to Amazon;
2) Just another way for the CIA to abuse people its friends don't like, with no concern for integrity;
then everything will fall neatly into place.
Maybe so. The point is that "envy!" is really a baseless ad hominem.
It's not the lack of promise of a specific rate of return that makes this a Ponzi scheme - it's the lack of wealth generation. Your early players aren't getting rich because they've invested early in a productive endeavour, but by hyping up demand for an increasingly scarce item of no intrinsic value.
Even now, so many bitcoin adherents seem to be under the misapprehension that bitcoins could genuinely be a replacement for government-regulated currencies or gold, even though there is nothing to stop governments regulating bitcoins like the USD (and changing algorithms if necessary), and gold has intrinsic value. These absurd beliefs, which seem to be deliberately promoted by those involved early with bitcoins, just fuel the bubble in a daft zero-sum game.
Stock value is based on underlying company value.
Bitcoin value is based on speculator whim.
1) I didn't realise that jumping a ticket barrier while looking a bit Arab was sufficient grounds for being shot several times. I must have been dreaming through the twenty-five years my father and I lived through IRA bombings in London as commuters using the underground, running around looking like Arabs, and never being shot.
This included the time my foreigner-with-a-suitcase father had to run from a bomb which had just gone off. Thank goodness our services weren't always this incompetent;
2) Can you think of reasons why Kelly's family would not want to make a fuss? Here are two:
i) If your loved one has just died then, whatever it means to the country, it's also a very personal thing to you. You don't want it turning into a media freeding frenzy (well, certainly no more than it already was!);
ii) If you have the slightest suspicion that the government has murdered one of your family, who wouldn't you want to piss off a second time?
There are a few absurd but also some very credible outstanding objections to the handling of Kelly's inquest.
3) Re Tomlinson, it requires a fairly high level of legal cluelessness and a strong moral vacuum to argue, "Well, he was ill and would probably have died soon anyway, so what does it matter that he was assaulted by a police officer? And who cares that the police denied the assault?"
* * *
I agree that Kelly's death is the odd one out in that we have no confirmation that the death was the result of needless state brutality. Instead, all we have is the refusal to conduct a full timely inquest following one of the most suspicious high-profile deaths in recent UK political memory, an on-going defence from (ex-)government of confirmed liars, and a pile of never-addressed objections.
If justice is not seen to be done then justice is not done.
What if someone promised me $2b to beat up a stranger? Would it be okay to do it as long as I gave that money to charity? How do YOU draw the line?
Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, not an entrepreneurial endeavour.
It is more profitable in the short and medium terms to put DRM on ink cartridges than to maintain a world-beating engineering company.
Do you find anything wrong with this? You should find something wrong with this.
I'm not trying to quote "a phrase", lovely. I'm stating that in general they do not, and in this particular case they do not.
Well, you have a lot of faith in British law enforcement and security.
No, you'll suddenly decide to kill yourself just before you're going to present important information, like David Kelly. Or you'll commit a minor infraction like jumping a ticket barrier and be shot a few times for "oh he was totally about to set off a bomb", a la Jean Charles de Menezes. Or you'll have a heart attack after being lightly handled by a police officer during a protest, like Ian Tomlinson.
Thank you. I was hoping to be as obvious as possible without actually stating it, leaving the kids to fling shit until they worked out their mistake, but you said what needed to be said.
Google has already been the subject of investigations and multiple accusations in Italy, and even TFA points out that new legislation to counteract fiscal dumping has been dubbed "the Google tax".
So, to reiterate: they're all the same.
The ends do not justify the means.
In particular, "Dirty money is okay because I can do good with it," is morally bankrupt.
Then you take advantage of that law of physics which says that vacuums are never filled.
Social democracy isn't bolstering the power of government - the government is already large and powerful and in the hands of businesspeople. I am talking about change of control.
I don't know what you mean about not seeing companies as if they are enemies. I don't see any of this in terms of enmity or friendship, just power grabs.
Anyway, there's my dismissal of two of your straw men.
I don't know, why do economies based on ideology always fail and have to be rerouted back to mixed economy?
Why don't we ask the USA or Western Europe, since they've had some excellent recent experience with that problem.
Well, governments aren't going anywhere, and neither are powerful individuals, so either you temper them with a good dose of social democracy, or you lie down and give up.
Sounds good, but the witless /. mods will strike me down with fiery vengeance for suggesting that all the teams are the same.
Well played.
AC, both your ingenuity and your dullardry are unbounded.
What's the difference?
Clearly you haven't been paying attention to the Italian government for the last half-century.
The problem will not be that Google has not been paying tax - the problem will be that Google hasn't been greasing the right palms.
Criminal means convicted under the law - so it's precisely lobbying and other corruption which stops this behaviour being criminal.
There is no solution except a tempering of capitalism. If you allow businesses to become too powerful, they will take over governments. They have taken over governments.