> Case in point: Alexander Fleming's discovery of
> penicillin in 1929 where he refused to patent
> it. Unfortunately his humanitarian grounds
> severely reduced the adoption of penicillin
> until WWII.
According to PBS, he ran a few tests and decided, wrongly, that it wouldn't work properly in the body, and gave up. They were of the opinion he was a mediocre scientist at best.
The correct answer to all this fascist whining is to reduce the power of government so religions and corporations CAN'T use government to implement their wills.
>> whose process...has been somewhat perverted by
>> a wealthy Cuban expat community
>
> Absolutely true - so if USA was a democracy
> there wouldn't be any ambargo because a small
> minority (cuban expat) wouldn't be capable of
> taking the dicision for the majority.
Democracy is not the god to strive for. Freedom is. Search through history and you'll see problems that at the root have someone standing there with a gun or a bow or a sword trying to impose their will.
Putting that gun under the hands of "Democracy", no holds barred, is not going to solve anything. Now the thugs just have to create some asinine patter that sounds good to the idiot masses, and it's back to the usual business.
Anyway, given that the Cuban expats had their property and land stolen by Castro (democratic "nationalization", i.e. same ol' same ol' theft) and that there are plenty who still want it back, I have no problem whatsoever choosing freedom over democracy.
AND, listen here. I find it bizarre that you complain about the US supporting fascists then whine about Cuba when we did with Cuba EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANTED! That is, did NOT support the new dictator, and presto! He goes to communism to get support for his dictatorship.
>> Half of the citizen do not votes.
>
> Right, let's force everyone to vote! Then we'll
> see some democracy!
On the eve of a presidential election about 2 or 3 elections ago, Jeff Greenfield had a little op-ed piece on the end of that evening's newscast. It went something like this:
"There's been a lot of talk about getting out the vote lately. If you don't care enough about voting to research issues or a candidate, then don't vote. Stay home. Leave the voting to people who care enough to make a decision based on other than a whim."
> The point here is that due to fallible human
> nature larger government will always result in
> larger corruption and pressure from corporate
> entities.
And the unstated solution is to have an even larger and more intrusive government into the lives of people. Non-coericive monopoly (business) bad, coercive monopoly (government) good.
Please note that WalMart, GM, Exxon, whoever, aren't even close to having wild dreams of being a non-coercive monopoly.
Given the history of governments, why anyone wants them to have more power is beyond me. I guess it's because it's easy to have dreams of grandeur that one's philosophy on how everyone else should behave, implemented at the point of a gun, will result in a better world. You are behind the gun, after all.
> Because, in many areas, Wal-Mart has destroyed all competition.
No, they've only destroyed the inefficient competition of Mom & Pop stores, quaint as they might be. Free people vote with their dollars and go to Walmart. Are you saying they should be forced to go to higher-charging Mom & Pop stores under thread of jail?
And is the alternative, that the governments have most of the money, preferrable?
With corporations, you can vote with your dollars and not deal with anyone for whatever reason that is important to YOU. No one with a gun standing there threatening you with jail (and, resisting jail, death) if you don't buy their product.
And presumably, by smashing these corporations until they kowtow to every last idiotic socialist premesis until they labor, crawling, barely able to move, and then the poorest 1.2 billion will be much better off!
> 4. The Top 200s' combined sales are 18 times the
> size of the combined annual income of the 1.2
> billion people (24 percent of the total world
> population) living in "severe" poverty.
It doesn't take long before meaningless associations start taking place, does it? Let the illogical arguments from emotion and moral intimidation commence!
Then there's this gem:
> 3. The Top 200 corporations' combined sales are
> bigger than the combined economies of all
> countries minus the biggest 10.
No doubt to suggest that this is something hideous, rather than the proper conclusion: that freedom, and its natural corollary, capitalism, are hellishly more productive and beneficial for their citizens than heavy-handed socialism.
Well, there's the old story that Elvis earned even more money the first few years after his death than he did in his whole life, and he earned a ton during his life.
Very little besides serious number crunching needs even compiled code, much less assembly anymore.
I'm sad LISP hasn't taken over as the language of the WWW. The need to create data structures is sadly a programming phase that's taking a little longer to go out of style, especially with oop, the bastard stepchild.
> No, he's not right. In fact, he's almost as
> wrong as he could be.
Is he?
Saying 100 light years wouldn't make us detected is like a caveman saying, "Gee, we can't throw a rock more than 20 Oog-lengths, so no one will find us!" Meanwhile, a satellite with square-inch resolution orbits overhead and spots the campfire at nighttime with no problems whatsoever.
We probably are found, and the fact we don't see a galaxy filled with immensly powerful artificial signals indicates either we are being directly shielded, or the standard galactic communication is hidden, piggybacked on background radiation ala Contact, or my favorite theory, there's much better ways to communicate than radio waves, so the period of EMF useage by a civilization is very brief.
I did once read that doctors do recommend dihydrogen monoxide to prevent pharyngeal adhesion of analgesics. That was before it was declared a controlled substance, of course (see above for evils.)
Come sign the petition for the medicinal use of medical dihydrogen monoxide!
Not true! While technical data on X-43 itself was not not learned, Nasa learned valuable negative information about the overall X-43 program and the idea of using a known, proven rocket that they didn't know they didn't know they could learn not things from.
> Just because you've lowered the cost of
> distribution to near-zero doesn't mean you can
> ignore the cost of production.
And as I always point out, a $20 CD already IS near-zero cost of distribution when you consider the countless trillions of dollars in development of mechanics, electronics, shipping, and what-not over the centuries, and how much it would be without any of that. To earn enough to buy music in a couple of hours? My god, what an incredible accomplishment.
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> Case in point: Alexander Fleming's discovery of
> penicillin in 1929 where he refused to patent
> it. Unfortunately his humanitarian grounds
> severely reduced the adoption of penicillin
> until WWII.
According to PBS, he ran a few tests and decided, wrongly, that it wouldn't work properly in the body, and gave up. They were of the opinion he was a mediocre scientist at best.
The correct answer to all this fascist whining is to reduce the power of government so religions and corporations CAN'T use government to implement their wills.
>> whose process...has been somewhat perverted by
>> a wealthy Cuban expat community
>
> Absolutely true - so if USA was a democracy
> there wouldn't be any ambargo because a small
> minority (cuban expat) wouldn't be capable of
> taking the dicision for the majority.
Democracy is not the god to strive for. Freedom is. Search through history and you'll see problems that at the root have someone standing there with a gun or a bow or a sword trying to impose their will.
Putting that gun under the hands of "Democracy", no holds barred, is not going to solve anything. Now the thugs just have to create some asinine patter that sounds good to the idiot masses, and it's back to the usual business.
Anyway, given that the Cuban expats had their property and land stolen by Castro (democratic "nationalization", i.e. same ol' same ol' theft) and that there are plenty who still want it back, I have no problem whatsoever choosing freedom over democracy.
AND, listen here. I find it bizarre that you complain about the US supporting fascists then whine about Cuba when we did with Cuba EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANTED! That is, did NOT support the new dictator, and presto! He goes to communism to get support for his dictatorship.
>> Half of the citizen do not votes.
>
> Right, let's force everyone to vote! Then we'll
> see some democracy!
On the eve of a presidential election about 2 or 3 elections ago, Jeff Greenfield had a little op-ed piece on the end of that evening's newscast. It went something like this:
"There's been a lot of talk about getting out the vote lately. If you don't care enough about voting to research issues or a candidate, then don't vote. Stay home. Leave the voting to people who care enough to make a decision based on other than a whim."
> The point here is that due to fallible human
> nature larger government will always result in
> larger corruption and pressure from corporate
> entities.
And the unstated solution is to have an even larger and more intrusive government into the lives of people. Non-coericive monopoly (business) bad, coercive monopoly (government) good.
Please note that WalMart, GM, Exxon, whoever, aren't even close to having wild dreams of being a non-coercive monopoly.
Given the history of governments, why anyone wants them to have more power is beyond me. I guess it's because it's easy to have dreams of grandeur that one's philosophy on how everyone else should behave, implemented at the point of a gun, will result in a better world. You are behind the gun, after all.
> Because, in many areas, Wal-Mart has destroyed all competition.
No, they've only destroyed the inefficient competition of Mom & Pop stores, quaint as they might be. Free people vote with their dollars and go to Walmart. Are you saying they should be forced to go to higher-charging Mom & Pop stores under thread of jail?
And is the alternative, that the governments have most of the money, preferrable?
With corporations, you can vote with your dollars and not deal with anyone for whatever reason that is important to YOU. No one with a gun standing there threatening you with jail (and, resisting jail, death) if you don't buy their product.
> "balanced reporting" that is required by law
Now there's an oxymoron if I've ever heard one.
And presumably, by smashing these corporations until they kowtow to every last idiotic socialist premesis until they labor, crawling, barely able to move, and then the poorest 1.2 billion will be much better off!
> 4. The Top 200s' combined sales are 18 times the
> size of the combined annual income of the 1.2
> billion people (24 percent of the total world
> population) living in "severe" poverty.
It doesn't take long before meaningless associations start taking place, does it? Let the illogical arguments from emotion and moral intimidation commence!
Then there's this gem:
> 3. The Top 200 corporations' combined sales are
> bigger than the combined economies of all
> countries minus the biggest 10.
No doubt to suggest that this is something hideous, rather than the proper conclusion: that freedom, and its natural corollary, capitalism, are hellishly more productive and beneficial for their citizens than heavy-handed socialism.
Let's get Arthur on a Burger King cup!
Now that Gene's dead, it's improving greatly. Who amongst us can't wait for a series starring the guy from Quantum Leap.
Well, there's the old story that Elvis earned even more money the first few years after his death than he did in his whole life, and he earned a ton during his life.
More interesting is the eight to ten hours just to open a medium-sized jpeg, even neglecting the RAM issue.
How soon everyone forgets the non-instantaneous nature of that operation pre-Pentium and pre-Power PC.
Why is it dumb? It's brutally obvious. A decent interpreter can handle everything for 99% of non-game applications on modern, highspeed processors.
As for scary, it should be scary. It's a new paradigm for boneheads like you...
Very little besides serious number crunching needs even compiled code, much less assembly anymore.
I'm sad LISP hasn't taken over as the language of the WWW. The need to create data structures is sadly a programming phase that's taking a little longer to go out of style, especially with oop, the bastard stepchild.
Ehh, my PII 266 takes > 50 hours, while my PIII 450 takes about 15 hours. First has 95, second 98. Is there THAT much difference between the two?
> No, he's not right. In fact, he's almost as
> wrong as he could be.
Is he?
Saying 100 light years wouldn't make us detected is like a caveman saying, "Gee, we can't throw a rock more than 20 Oog-lengths, so no one will find us!" Meanwhile, a satellite with square-inch resolution orbits overhead and spots the campfire at nighttime with no problems whatsoever.
We probably are found, and the fact we don't see a galaxy filled with immensly powerful artificial signals indicates either we are being directly shielded, or the standard galactic communication is hidden, piggybacked on background radiation ala Contact, or my favorite theory, there's much better ways to communicate than radio waves, so the period of EMF useage by a civilization is very brief.
Shhhhh! Don't burst their bubble! The voice of the people is the voice of God!
I just signed up for long distance for 7 cents a minute instate, 9 cents out of state. AT&T just bumped theirs to 20-something a minute.
It's like a bloated fish flopping around in the boat, working its way under a life preserver.
I did once read that doctors do recommend dihydrogen monoxide to prevent pharyngeal adhesion of analgesics. That was before it was declared a controlled substance, of course (see above for evils.)
Come sign the petition for the medicinal use of medical dihydrogen monoxide!
> I was refering to the fact that air quality is
> going to get worse and worse. At some point we
> wont have very much clean air to fly scram jets.
You must be confusing rhetoric with reality.
I wonder if a clean jet like this will actually combust pollutants and "leave the air cleaner" as it goes by, so to speak.
Why not? They've been buying failing social programs for trillions of dollars for decades now.
Not true! While technical data on X-43 itself was not not learned, Nasa learned valuable negative information about the overall X-43 program and the idea of using a known, proven rocket that they didn't know they didn't know they could learn not things from.
I thought top-end Mac processors were 2x the speed of top-end Intel and climbing?
If you could afford a top-end machine, of course.
All I know is Macs sure aren't taxing their CPU's at home playing games...
> Just because you've lowered the cost of
> distribution to near-zero doesn't mean you can
> ignore the cost of production.
And as I always point out, a $20 CD already IS near-zero cost of distribution when you consider the countless trillions of dollars in development of mechanics, electronics, shipping, and what-not over the centuries, and how much it would be without any of that. To earn enough to buy music in a couple of hours? My god, what an incredible accomplishment.