Because businesses are run by people, and people aren't rational.
The *rational* thing to do is make sure your ships are safe so that you don't waste a quarter billion dollars. However, since it's *unlikely* that a ship will sink, people in pursuit of immediate profits overload them. People love playing the odds.
Also, absent any real numbers about how much extra money companies can make by slipping on tons of extra cargo, you can't say for sure that this *isn't* more profitable than doing things safely. That is, if you practice Randian amoral rationality, it may actually be the *rational* choice to load your ships up so much they occasionally break in half, because it might ultimately save you money.
The people in charge of making sure ships don't sneak out of port without paying for their taxes need to measure where the water line is on the ship when it enters port, then measure it again when the ship leaves, then use the blueprint of the ship to calculate how much more water is being displaced and how much that water weighs. All you need in order to do this is measuring tape, a calculator, and a blueprint of the ship.
As for "slippery slope", that's not my idea. In fact, it's the idea of Marx and Lenin, who argued (in effect) that taxation, social programs, and other such progressive favorites are the road towards the realization of communism.
It was just as fallacious when they used it. Marx and Lenin, much like Ayn Rand and her ilk, are wrong about all sorts of things.
And the receipt you linked a screenshot to is highly biased due to selection bias (look here, I found a receipt that makes my point!), and contains no research or analysis whatsoever. You provide no data at all except for a single cherry-picked receipt and then criticize the source of mine because you think there might be bias in it, based on your perceptions of the source?
Bzzt! You lose. For your "theory", lets say the government buys a $1000 widget. It didn't produce that widget, it spent the money to buy that widget. It didn't spend $1000 for that widget, it spent $1200 because the government has its overhead. The best part is it took that $1200 from wealth producers and it cost the government an additional $100 to run the IRS for that. On top of that it will probably spend $400 in interest on loans for that original amount.
If that's true, then banks and venture capitalists certainly don't add wealth to the economy, because all they do is loan out money to other people so those people can pay other people to produce things.
Also, there's real data on the returns on food assistance, whereas you're making up shit about widgets and pulling arbitrary numbers out of the air. If you're going to bother making an argument against real numbers, at least do a tiny bit of fucking homework and find real numbers of your own. The ones you've pulled out of your ass are meaningless in any kind of serious discussion.
If, say, there were actually a gradual curve between pure capitalism and pure communism, and the optimal point along that curve were somewhere in between the far ends. That would be really strange. But the world is a very simple, black and white place, and everything is completely straightforward, and there's no middle ground, which is why slippery slope arguments are always true and correct.
You might want to get a new introductory economics book. Yours sounds like it was written to promote a political view rather than actually, ya know, teach economics.
The government is just as capable of producing wealth as any other entity. If the government spends money on a program that adds more value to the economy than the cost of the program (such as food assistance, which has close to a 2:1 return), then the government has produced wealth. Whether the entity is public or private doesn't figure into it at all.
Also this is an interesting opportunity to talk about the shortcomings of American ISPs. No one will want to use your stupid cloud as a hard drive until ISPs start providing real bandwidth so that it'll take less than ten minutes to save a large file.
Even then, I'd prefer to store my data locally, thank you very much. Maybe if you're nice and incredibly cheap I'll encrypt the hell out of some of my files and use you as an off-site backup service.
Seriously, how many people are going to switch to Linux over this? Nobody.
Even if that's the case, it will hurt them if people decide never to upgrade.
I run Windows 7 right now. I see absolutely zero compelling reasons to upgrade to Windows 8, and plenty of compelling reasons not to. I don't have to switch to Linux for Microsoft to lose out on my money. I just have to not buy any more of their products.
P.S. Lest I lose all of my Slashdot cred, I should point out that I dual-boot.
You don't think large advertising companies have some automated way of taking a GPS location, converting that to an address, then using public records to look up the owner of the property?
Give me a month of a homeowner's GPS data and access to public records, and I can write a program that will determine exactly who they are with a relatively high degree of certainty.
Yeah, Sinfest is unfortunate. When 'Nique got her "Important Haircut" (see tvtropes), the whole comic changed. Sinfest used to be even-handed about making fun of things (and it certainly made fun of misogynists long before the style change), but now it reads like a preachy radical feminist tumblr blog.
Part of the problem is Apple's runaway success in the last few years. Everyone wants to rake in the cash the way Apple is, and they figure that the best way to do that is by imitating Apple's our-way-or-the-highway method of doing things. Trouble is, while Apple may have its adherents, there are plenty of people out there who hate Apple, in part because of the way they take away customization options. People like this (myself included) are somewhat less lucrative customers, because we distrust the "app store" model and dislike paying for features that ought to be free.
Apple and Microsoft want users who are happy with being locked down. They're easier to manage and make money from, and above all, they accept what they're given.
the guy fucked up by simply saying that he has couple of rack mounted servers. should have just hung up on the rep, really. or said that he's streaming his personal video from his other house where he keeps cute cats running around. because, if he had so many machines, I doubt he wanted verizon to cut his service.
Or just said, "My internet usage is my business and I don't feel like divulging the details to you."
You missed three very important points that the global warming denialists have made over the last decade or two:
* Global warming isn't real. * Global warming *is* real, but it's completely natural and not at all man-made. * Global warming is real and man-made, but it's good.
Slashdot Mirror
Because businesses are run by people, and people aren't rational.
The *rational* thing to do is make sure your ships are safe so that you don't waste a quarter billion dollars. However, since it's *unlikely* that a ship will sink, people in pursuit of immediate profits overload them. People love playing the odds.
Also, absent any real numbers about how much extra money companies can make by slipping on tons of extra cargo, you can't say for sure that this *isn't* more profitable than doing things safely. That is, if you practice Randian amoral rationality, it may actually be the *rational* choice to load your ships up so much they occasionally break in half, because it might ultimately save you money.
The people in charge of making sure ships don't sneak out of port without paying for their taxes need to measure where the water line is on the ship when it enters port, then measure it again when the ship leaves, then use the blueprint of the ship to calculate how much more water is being displaced and how much that water weighs. All you need in order to do this is measuring tape, a calculator, and a blueprint of the ship.
Also, I noticed you're avoiding my actual point.
As for "slippery slope", that's not my idea. In fact, it's the idea of Marx and Lenin, who argued (in effect) that taxation, social programs, and other such progressive favorites are the road towards the realization of communism.
It was just as fallacious when they used it. Marx and Lenin, much like Ayn Rand and her ilk, are wrong about all sorts of things.
And the receipt you linked a screenshot to is highly biased due to selection bias (look here, I found a receipt that makes my point!), and contains no research or analysis whatsoever. You provide no data at all except for a single cherry-picked receipt and then criticize the source of mine because you think there might be bias in it, based on your perceptions of the source?
Okay, I'm convinced.
The existence of this single data point disproves research and statistical analysis.
Bzzt! You lose. For your "theory", lets say the government buys a $1000 widget. It didn't produce that widget, it spent the money to buy that widget. It didn't spend $1000 for that widget, it spent $1200 because the government has its overhead. The best part is it took that $1200 from wealth producers and it cost the government an additional $100 to run the IRS for that. On top of that it will probably spend $400 in interest on loans for that original amount.
If that's true, then banks and venture capitalists certainly don't add wealth to the economy, because all they do is loan out money to other people so those people can pay other people to produce things.
Also, there's real data on the returns on food assistance, whereas you're making up shit about widgets and pulling arbitrary numbers out of the air. If you're going to bother making an argument against real numbers, at least do a tiny bit of fucking homework and find real numbers of your own. The ones you've pulled out of your ass are meaningless in any kind of serious discussion.
Ya know what would be weird?
If, say, there were actually a gradual curve between pure capitalism and pure communism, and the optimal point along that curve were somewhere in between the far ends. That would be really strange. But the world is a very simple, black and white place, and everything is completely straightforward, and there's no middle ground, which is why slippery slope arguments are always true and correct.
You might want to get a new introductory economics book. Yours sounds like it was written to promote a political view rather than actually, ya know, teach economics.
The government is just as capable of producing wealth as any other entity. If the government spends money on a program that adds more value to the economy than the cost of the program (such as food assistance, which has close to a 2:1 return), then the government has produced wealth. Whether the entity is public or private doesn't figure into it at all.
a bigger hard drive.
The cloud can shove it.
Also this is an interesting opportunity to talk about the shortcomings of American ISPs. No one will want to use your stupid cloud as a hard drive until ISPs start providing real bandwidth so that it'll take less than ten minutes to save a large file.
Even then, I'd prefer to store my data locally, thank you very much. Maybe if you're nice and incredibly cheap I'll encrypt the hell out of some of my files and use you as an off-site backup service.
Your dumb analogy has convinced me that I am wrong.
Seriously, how many people are going to switch to Linux over this? Nobody.
Even if that's the case, it will hurt them if people decide never to upgrade.
I run Windows 7 right now. I see absolutely zero compelling reasons to upgrade to Windows 8, and plenty of compelling reasons not to. I don't have to switch to Linux for Microsoft to lose out on my money. I just have to not buy any more of their products.
P.S. Lest I lose all of my Slashdot cred, I should point out that I dual-boot.
Agreed.
Single-payer health care would definitely be a way to fix this.
My phone GPS doesn't have much trouble zeroing in right on my house.
You don't think large advertising companies have some automated way of taking a GPS location, converting that to an address, then using public records to look up the owner of the property?
Give me a month of a homeowner's GPS data and access to public records, and I can write a program that will determine exactly who they are with a relatively high degree of certainty.
Yeah, Sinfest is unfortunate. When 'Nique got her "Important Haircut" (see tvtropes), the whole comic changed. Sinfest used to be even-handed about making fun of things (and it certainly made fun of misogynists long before the style change), but now it reads like a preachy radical feminist tumblr blog.
...some things *aren't* bigger in Texas.
Those things will certainly do that, but Megatokyo updated infrequently long before any of that happened.
Part of the problem is Apple's runaway success in the last few years. Everyone wants to rake in the cash the way Apple is, and they figure that the best way to do that is by imitating Apple's our-way-or-the-highway method of doing things. Trouble is, while Apple may have its adherents, there are plenty of people out there who hate Apple, in part because of the way they take away customization options. People like this (myself included) are somewhat less lucrative customers, because we distrust the "app store" model and dislike paying for features that ought to be free.
Apple and Microsoft want users who are happy with being locked down. They're easier to manage and make money from, and above all, they accept what they're given.
Hi Trolly McTrollerson,
If you care that much about speed, you should probably consider something other than Java and C#.
the guy fucked up by simply saying that he has couple of rack mounted servers. should have just hung up on the rep, really. or said that he's streaming his personal video from his other house where he keeps cute cats running around. because, if he had so many machines, I doubt he wanted verizon to cut his service.
Or just said, "My internet usage is my business and I don't feel like divulging the details to you."
Her adventurous Spirit is an example for all of us.
It looks big enough to carry a raspberry pi. Use that for the heavy duty computing and have the arduino control the servos.
To me it completely misses the point of shooting, whether target shooting or hunting (and for hunting it completely removes the sport aspect).
For some hunters, the point is to get food.
You missed three very important points that the global warming denialists have made over the last decade or two:
* Global warming isn't real.
* Global warming *is* real, but it's completely natural and not at all man-made.
* Global warming is real and man-made, but it's good.